ECB officials met bankers before key decisions

The diaries show two members of the ECB's executive board, Benoît Cœuré and Yves Mersch, met people from UBS the day before a two-day policy meeting of the central bank's rate-setting governing council on September 3 and 4 2014. Mr Cœuré also met BNP Paribas on the morning of September 4, the day the ECB's governing council surprised markets by cutting interest rates. It also announced it would begin buying private sector assets to save the eurozone's economy from the threat of deflation. UBS and BNP Paribas declined to comment.

Mr Cœuré met asset manager BlackRock the day before a policy meeting in March this year, when the council unveiled the details of how it would carry out its €1.1tn asset purchase, or quantitative easing, programme. BlackRock declined to comment.

The ECB's vice-president, Vítor Constâncio, and its chief economist, Peter Praet, met Algebris, a hedge fund, at the height of this summer's Greek crisis, when the governing council was holding daily conference calls on whether to continue sanctioning emergency loans to keep Greece's banks afloat. Mr Constâncio and Mr Praet met Algebris on June 23. Mr Praet also met BNP Paribas Fortis on June 22 and bond fund Pimco on June 25. Algebris and Pimco declined to comment.