|
 Banks remained very creative in circumventing regulation and while
stricter bank capital rules would lead to more stability in the
sector, they were not enough, the newspaper quoted Schaeuble as
saying.
"I know the banks think 'that's enough now'," he told Handelsblatt.
"But as I said for example a few days ago to Deutsche Bank chief
Juergen Fitschen: it wasn't countries that unleashed the crisis, it
was the financial sector! Therefore there can be no end in
regulating."
Speaking in Berlin on Wednesday evening, Deutsche's <DBKGn.DE>
Fitschen responded: "It's unacceptable for people to stand there and
say that banks are still circumventing the rules."
Fitschen, in his capacity as head of Germany's BdB banking
association, also said in a statement that saying hardly any
progress had been made on regulation overlooked the "far-reaching
changes of recent years."
He said many regulatory measures such as higher capital and
liquidity requirements, stricter remuneration rules, a single
wind-up agency and the banking union were in the works or were
already being implemented.
[to top of second column] |
Schaeuble said that while he would continue to fight for the
introduction of a financial transaction tax in the European Union,
he was skeptical such a tax would raise the hoped-for funds "in the
foreseeable future".
As a result, the 2 billion euros ($2.7 billion) that the tax is
meant to raise annually from 2015 according to the ministry's
medium-term finance plan were not taken into account in coalition
negotiations between Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives and
the Social Democrats.
($1 = 0.7360 euros)
[© 2013 Thomson Reuters. All
rights reserved.]
(Reporting by Sarah Marsh; additional reporting by Klaus Lauer and
Michelle Martin; editing by Ludwig Burger/Ruth Pitchford)
Copyright 2013 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. |
