Brussels, 02/04/2015 (Agence Europe) -German regional bank Landeskreditbank Bade-Württemberg (L-Bank) lodged an appeal at the European General Court in mid-March for annulment of legislation requiring it to be directly supervised by the ECB.
The bank highlights the extra costs and administrative burden caused by the transfer of surveillance from Germany to European level, reported the Wall Street Journal on Thursday 2 April. Arguing that its commercial model is simple, L-Bank says that direct supervision by the ECB should only apply to complex banks deemed to be “too-big-to-fail”.
Under EU Regulation 1024/2013 establishing the supervision arm of banking union, that came into force in November 2014, any bank with total assets of over `€30 billion must be supervised by the European Central Bank. L-Bank managed assets of more than €70 billion in 2013 and is one of the 21 banks concerned by the regulation.
During the legislative process that led to the creation of the supervision arm of banking union, Germany argued for different banks to be supervised differently, in order to keep small, regional banks under the remit of the German supervisory body. (Mathieu Bion)