The Bundesbank has released a short film about Germany's gold reserves.

The Bundesbank, along with other important data providers in Germany, has today started publishing indicators in accordance with the Special Data Dissemination Standard Plus (SDDS Plus) of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). This puts Germany among the first nine countries worldwide to adhere to the most comprehensive standard internationally for a uniform approach to economic and financial data provision.

The Bundesbank received its final payment from the insolvency proceedings concerning Lehman Brothers Bankhaus AG (LBB) in January 2015. Following the realisation of monetary policy collateral, there remained an outstanding claim of around €1.9 billion. This has now been settled in full by payments from the insolvency estate of LBB and payments from the insolvency estate of the group parent company in the USA.

The Bundesbank registered approximately 63,000 counterfeit euro banknotes with a nominal value of €3.3 million in 2014, which represents a 63 % increase year on year. Statistically, this­ equates to eight counterfeit banknotes per 10,000 inhabitants.

German credit institutions eased their lending policies in all three surveyed lines of business in the final quarter of 2014.

The role of trade in goods in the development of global imbalances

In the third quarter of 2014, the financial assets of households rose by €28 billion on the quarter, climbing to €5,011 billion. While the transaction-related acquisition of financial assets amounted to just under €34.5 billion, leaving it roughly unchanged compared to the previous quarter, valuation losses, notably on shares, curtailed growth in assets by around €6.5 billion. With regard to types of investment, the trend towards liquid and lower-risk assets, which has been evident for some time now, continued into the third quarter.

The Bundesbank successfully continued and further stepped up its transfers of gold last year. In 2014, 120 tonnes of gold were transferred to Frankfurt am Main from storage locations abroad: 35 tonnes from Paris and 85 tonnes from New York.

Dr Johannes Beermann today took up office as a member of the Executive Board of the Deutsche Bundesbank. The Bundesbank's Executive Board has therefore reshuffled its areas of responsibility.