LONDON, Nov 28 Reuters The EU is falling behind Britain in tapping into savers39; money to boost the stock market, despite reforms in continental Europe being a step in the right direction, an official with Germany39;s bourse told Reuters.

In terms of policy change, in the UK there39;s a realisation that we need to incentivise more capital; we39;re not there yet in Germany, said Stefan Maassen, head of Capital Markets Corporates at Deutsche Boerse, which operates the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.

Maassen, a former investment banker, was referring to initiatives by the UK government aimed at directing up to 75 billion pounds 93.46 billion of extra capital into growth companies as part of efforts to encourage local stock listings.

Last week, UK chancellor Jeremy Hunt outlined measures in his autumn budget to pool pension funds and increase their allocation to unlisted equities.

Hunt stopped short of increasing the taxfree allowance for individual savings accounts ISAs to promote investment in British companies, an idea previously reported to be under consideration.

For Maassen there is an opportunity in Europe to rival US capital markets.

Forty percent of German household assets are sitting in cash accounts, you have the big pension funds and institutional asset managers, he said. If we were to mobilise part of the capital available in Europe, then we would have a similar depth of market to the U.S.

His comments come amid a dearth of IPOs across the Western world…