Even so, EIB president Philippe Maystadt's plan to seek a capital increase of as much as 75 percent just three years after the bank won a 60 percent boost caught credit analysts off-guard.

Maystadt told his bosses - European Union finance ministers - that the EIB would exhaust its current E250 billion ($214 billion) lending capacity within two years and that it would need an additional E175 billion in capital to raise capacity to E438 billion.

The finance ministers should be responsive to Maystadt's rattling of the begging bowl, because they've been heaping the bank with mandates. Among them: Expand lending to Eastern and Southern European countries that are candidates to join the EU, and provide risk capital to small and medium-size enterprises, technology start-ups and education projects. EIB lending jumped 13 percent in 2000, to E36 billion.

Indeed, Maystadt told II that "we cannot go on like this." For this year and next, the EIB's growth in lending is expected to slow to a single-digit rate (helping to preserve the bank's top credit rating). "I'm not interested in quantity," says Maystadt of the EIB's lending agenda. "I'm interested in quality."