I. The German Ringfencing Act

As a reaction to the financial crisis in 2007/2008 and to address risks in connection with the “too big to fail” phenomena, the German legislature issued the Ringfencing Act in 2014 (the “Act”).

In a nutshell, the Act forbids big CRR-credit institutions (depending on certain balance sheet thresholds) to engage in proprietary business (Eigengeschäft), proprietary trading (Eigenhandel) and credit/guarantee business with hedge funds (i.e., AIFs whose leverage exceeds three times their NAV).

Continue Reading Recent Developments on the German Ringfencing Regulation

In November 2018 the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (“Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht”, “BaFin”) and Deutsche Bundesbank published a guidance on outsourcing of services to cloud service providers (“Guidance on Cloud Services”). According to BaFin and Deutsche Bundesbank the Guidance on Cloud Services has not stipulated any new requirements, but has condensed the