The Specific Character of Some Characteristic Properties of the German Bank System
Abstract
In the German Federal Republic the restructuring of the traditional model of universal banking is taking place. The reforms of economic policy in the 1990s established grounds for a long-awaited and needed restructuring. At the moment there is an ongoing wave of privatisation and de-regulation. Tax reforms that have recently been introduced and desintermediation mean that the mutual relations between banks and big enterprises have come to an end. The introduction of Euro in 1999 and its attendant development of shares and bonds have made even the German “mittelstand” (traditional businesses, owned by families) to seek finances in the capital markets. These firms, however, need investment banks as organisers of financial activities. The leading German banks responded to the above trends with the “slimming down” of operations, separating retail and investment banking, and concentrating many banks on the latter.
It is an interesting question to examine whether all of the observed changes lead to a uniform global model of how the banks work, or else the difference of banking systems in various countries grows, a fact that may be a response to the global changes in the mechanisms of banks. The paper is based on the qualitative analysis (focused on the qualitative and quantitative indicators) that is designed to verify the above hypothesis.
The concept of “bank” denotes in German typically financial institutions entitled to take a broad spectre of activities, including investment banking, insurance services (although performed by means of a branch), broker and dealer activity on the securities market, payment services (which in Germany requires a banking licence). The banking sector in Germany has several distinctive properties. What is most important, as opposed to e.g. the USA, the public sector in Germany, by means of state-owned banks and Land-owned banks, has 40% of shares on the retail banking market. Secondly, the banks in Germany locate (“block”) their capital in industrial holdings. For instance, ten biggest private banks own 0.5% of the capitalisation of firms (with capitalisation over 1 million DM); their shares are available in the public stock market turnover in the Federal German Republic. Business contacts that result from such packages of shares made banks give loans that were safe for them, but this system called relationship banking is subject to changes. Tax reforms which were introduced in January 2002 provided tax exemptions for the seller of such shares, a procedure that was commonly called “the end of Deutschland AG.” The Deutsche Bank e.g. due to the fact that it had to finance enterprises through capital markets announced that it would sell the whole package of Daimler-Chrysler shares. The fact that capital markets take over from banks the financing of enterprises makes the role of investment banking grow in importance, and the German banks tend to gain the leading position in this area.
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