Press conference presenting the 2015 annual accounts

Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann and Executive Board Member Joachim Nagel will be presenting the Bundesbank’s annual accounts for the financial year 2015 in a press conference on 24 February 2016. The press conference will be held at 11.00 AM in the guest house of the Deutsche Bundesbank. The entire event will be streamed live in the internet with a simultaneous interpretation into English.

Real estate markets: lending is not heightening risk

Loans for house purchase are experiencing a marked upswing in Germany. Bundesbank analyses and a Eurosystem survey of banks both show that this credit growth is being driven by greater demand. Fears that the increase could have been precipitated by looser credit standards therefore have not solidified.

Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann is concerned about the development of government bond purchases by central banks in the euro area. "The higher the proportion of these bonds held by central banks, the greater the suspicion that the ban on the monetary financing of governments is being circumvented", Weidmann told the German daily newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

Challenges lie ahead for the Single Supervisory Mechanism

The euro area's Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM) has been up and running for just over a year now. At a conference in Frankfurt am Main, supervisors, bankers and academics discussed the challenges that now lie ahead in the supervisory space.

Bundesbank Executive Board member Andreas Dombret has called on banks’ management boards to take the appropriate measures to tackle cyber risks. "They need to have a concrete idea of what is at stake," Mr Dombret said at the Cybersecurity Conference in Munich.

In a joint guest article, Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann and the Governor of the Banque de France, François Villeroy de Galhau, have proposed fundamental reforms in Europe to enhance prosperity and stability. They argue that stronger European integration appears to be the straightforward solution to restore confidence in the euro area. However, if policymakers shy away from a fully-fledged union, individual national responsibility would have to be reinforced with stronger rules.

Standard bearer for Bundesbank independence

9 February marks the 130th anniversary of the birth of Wilhelm Vocke, who was President of the Board of Managers of the Bank deutscher Länder, the Bundesbank's predecessor, between 1948 and 1957. Vocke is remembered In Germany and abroad as a man who stood up for what he believed in and as the "guardian of the currency".

Discussion paper: Monetary policy can increase banks' risk appetite

Can monetary policy measures induce financial institutions to take higher risks? This is the question addressed by the two authors of a discussion paper that the Bundesbank's Research Centre has just published. In particular, they explore how monetary policy can influence the asset (ie investment) risk entered into by banks.

The Centre for Technical Central Bank Cooperation will be offering more than 40 international central banking courses in 2016. Please use the online application to apply. An overview of the courses you can find here.