by Bertrand Benoit in Berlin and Ivar Simensen in Frank­furt
FINANCIAL TIMES

The Ger­man gov­ern­ment will launch an inquiry into Bafin, the Ger­man finan­cial ser­vices reg­u­la­tor, amid accu­sa­tions that the watch­dog took too long to address crises at two banks that had to be bailed out.

Torsten Albig, a spokesman for the finance min­istry, which over­sees Bafin, said on Mon­day, the min­istry would look into “what rea­sons Bafin had to take, or not take, action”. The recent tur­moil in the glob­al cred­it mar­kets, trig­gered by a weak­en­ing US mort­gage mar­ket, has hit Ger­many’s finan­cial sec­tor par­tic­u­lar­ly hard.

In the past month, IKB, a small cmpa­ny lender, and Sach­sen LB, the pub­lic Lan­des­bank, had to be res­cued after they were unable to pro­vide cred­it facil­i­ties they had pledged to their own invest­ment funds.

Both banks had promised back-up cred­it facil­i­ties that far exceed­ed their own size, mak­ing it high­ly unlike­ly they could pro­vide the funds when prompt­ed. The facil­i­ties were designed legal­ly to avoid reg­u­la­to­ry lim­its on cred­it expo­sure. . . .

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