Bundesbank Executive Board member Andreas Dombret has asked German banks to step up their efforts in digitalising the industry. German banks should also be making greater investments in IT security in order to protect customer data, he said to an audience of around 700 representatives from banking supervision and the banking industry who attended the Bundesbank's 19th banking symposium in Frankfurt.

The Bundesbank marked the 25th anniversary of German monetary union with a ceremony in Leipzig, at which speakers included the former Finance Minister Theodor Waigel and member of the Bundesbank's Executive Board Carl-Ludwig Thiele. Contemporary witnesses detailed their experiences of the currency changeover during a podium discussion.

1 July 1990 marked the day on which the Deutsche Mark was introduced as the official currency in the then German Democratic Republic and became a symbol of German unity. The Bundesbank played a crucial role in the currency changeover.

Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann has criticised the continued provision of emergency liquidity assistance to Greek banks, which, he remarked, plainly raised serious monetary financing concerns. Respecting the euro area's core principles was indispensable for its success, however.

The new European securities settlement service, TARGET2-Securities (T2S) was launched on four markets on 22 June 2015. This represents the first step towards establishing a centralised European platform for settling securities and comes roughly seven years after the official launch of the project in 2008. Once migration has concluded in February 2017, T2S will encompass a total of 21 markets across Europe.

There are additional insights to be gained from going beyond established calculation variables and incorporating inflation options when analysing inflation expectations: so reads the Bundesbank’s recommendation in the June edition of its Monthly Report. Expectations regarding future inflation developments are of major importance to the credibility and effectiveness of a monetary policy with a clear focus on price stability.

Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann believes that abolishing cash is not the right means of stimulating the sluggish economy in some euro-area countries. At the Bundesbank’s payments symposium, Weidmann stated that the decisive factor was to address weak economic growth.

In its latest Monthly Report, the Bundesbank presents a detailed outlook for the German economy in 2015 and 2016, which was already published at the beginning of June. Additional focus lies on new instruments for measuring inflation expectations as well as on marketable financial instruments of banks and their role as collateral in the Eurosystem.

According to the current issue of its Monthly Report, the Bundesbank sees the German economy as having continued to pick up speed in the second quarter, with strong levels of consumption and the robust upswing in the export business being the main drivers of economic growth.

According to World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim, extreme poverty, the threat of pandemics and climate change are the greatest challenges facing the world. In a speech given at the Goethe University in Frankfurt, he stressed the crucial importance of finance as the key to success in solving these problems.