From today, the Deutsche Bundesbank will be issuing €5 banknotes of the second euro banknote series, thus bringing the first denomination of the new “Europa” series into circulation in Germany.

2011 saw a continuation of the trend towards building up multinational groups by way of holding companies.

The latest Bank Lending Survey revealed that the standards applied by banks when lending to non-financial corporations were relaxed to a moderate extent in the first quarter of 2013, but that the margins for these loans widened overall. Riskier loans were affected by this increase to a greater extent than loans to enterprises with good credit ratings.

According to provisional calculations, general government debt in Germany as defined in the Maastricht Treaty amounted to approximately €2.166 trillion at the end of 2012.The debt ratio, ie the ratio of debt to GDP, increased by 1.5 percentage points compared to 2011, amounting to 81.9%.