Basel III
On 16 December 2010, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision published its new regulatory framework, “Basel III”, and has revised and amended it over the years. The final rules on the liquidity coverage ratio were published in January 2013. The Bundesbank played an important role in drawing up these rules.
At the summit in Seoul in November 2010, the G20 leaders endorsed and pledged to rigor-ously implement the Basel III framework, which is to be transposed into national law by the end of 2012. In July 2011, the European Commission published two proposals for legislation implementing the Basel III reforms at EU level. In May 2012, the Council of the European Union agreed a general approach on the two proposals implementing Basel III (CRD and CRR) and the European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) likewise approved a report on CRD and CRR; consequently, the trialogue negotiations have now begun.
Basel III in the broader sense also includes the 2004 framework for the "International Convergence of Capital Measurement and Capital Standards" ("Basel II") and decisions taken since then by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. For instance, the Basel Committee responded to the subprime crisis by approving a package of measures strengthening the rules, especially for securitisations and market risk, in 2009, with updates in 2010 and 2011. These improvements to Basel II are referred to informally as "Basel II plus" or "Basel 2.5". At EU level, the "Capital Requirements Directive CRD III" (in German only) was adopted in 2010. The implementation into national law was completed at the end of October and published in the Federal Law Gazette (Bundesgesetzblatt). The changes to Pillar 2 were included in the amended Minimum Requirements for Risk Management (MaRisk) of 2009 (BaFin Circular 15/2009); implementation of the new remuneration rules was completed in 2010 with the adoption of the Regulation Governing Remuneration at Institutions.
In November 2011, the G20 leaders focused on the prudential treatment of global systemically important financial institutions (G-SIFIs) and committed to implementing the recommendations of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision and the Financial Stability Board (FSB).
Additionally the G20 leaders committed to implementing the recommendations of the Committee on the prudential treatment of domestic systemically important financial institutions in November 2012.
On 3 September 2013, the CRD IV Implementation Act was published in the Federal Law Gazette; in particular, it enacts the necessary changes to the German Banking Act (Kreditwesengesetz). In addition, the implementation of the CRD package also requires changes to the Solvency Regulation (Solvabilitätsverordnung), the Regulation governing large exposures and loans of 1.5 million euro or more (Grosskredit- und Millionenkreditverordnung), the Liquidity Regulation (Liquiditätsverordnung) and the Regulation Governing Remuneration at Institutions (Instituts-Vergütungsverordnung) as well as the creation of two new regulations, the Financial Information Regulation (Finanzinformationenverordnung) and the Housing Enterprises Solvency Regulation (Wohnungsunternehmen-Solvabilitätsverordnung).
A revised version of the Capital Requirements Regulation, in which technical errors have been corrected, was published in the Official Journal of the European Union on 30 November 2013.
