Banken sollten bei der Dividendenausschüttung eine konservative Politik verfolgen und dabei den derzeit schwierigen wirtschaftlichen und finanziellen Bedingungen Rechnung tragen.

Bundesbank Executive Board member Andreas Dombret currently sees no signs of a real estate price bubble in Germany. However, high liquidity levels and low interest rates make a bubble more likely, warned Dombret at a speech in Berlin.

A thorn in the side of policymakers but indispensable to the Deutsche Bundesbank. Former Bundesbank President Karl Otto Pöhl passed away on 9 December 2014 in Switzerland, his adopted home country, at the age of 85.

A ceremony in Osnabrück marked the opening of an exhibition entitled "The new face of the euro". New banknotes of the second series, also known as the "Europa" series, will be amongst those taking centre stage in the Cultural History Museum until 3 May.

Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann is critical of the ECB Governing Council's recent decision to purchase government bonds. He does not consider such a programme necessary at present, and sees a risk that the purchases might reduce the pressure on crisis countries to reform. He said that the specific structure would mitigate at least some of the problems that government bond purchases entail.

The accession of Lithuania as the euro area’s 19th member state as from the beginning of 2015 will trigger a new voting procedure, in which the voting rights of the national central bank (NCB) governors at ECB Governing Council meetings will rotate. This is designed to ensure that decisions can still be taken efficiently in future, too.