Announcement on the minimum requirements for the conduct of commercial transactions by credit institutions
The announcement on minimum requirements for the operation of commercial transactions of the credit institutions (MaH) was an instrument of the German banking supervision, with which the orderly organization of the business operations of German credit institutions in connection with the execution of commercial transactions should be ensured. In this regard, the MaH specified the requirements of Section 25a (1) of the Banking Act .
The MaH was published on October 23, 1995 by the then Federal Banking Supervisory Office (BaKred) and replaced on December 20, 2005 by the minimum requirements for risk management (MaRisk) of the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) .
The announcement was one of the so-called " minimum requirements ", which is an instrument used by banking supervision to ensure the proper organization of business operations in certain areas of credit institutions. Minimum requirements of BaKred the first time in 1975 after the bankruptcy of Herstatt Bank as a result of currency speculation published. The MaH implemented the guideline for risk management in connection with trading in derivatives, which the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision called for in July 1994.
The announcement contained minimum requirements for the operation of trading activities, which all banks had to observe in order to secure their solvency and which had to be supplemented or specified in internal instructions, taking into account the respective type and scope of trading activities; they also applied to the branches of German credit institutions abroad.
All contracts that are considered to be trading transactions in the sense of these requirements
- Money market business
- Securities business (including trading in promissory notes and registered bonds as well as securities lending, excluding issuing transactions)
- Foreign exchange business
- Precious metals business or
- Business in derivatives
had as a basis and which were concluded in their own name and for their own or someone else's account. Commercial transactions were also - regardless of the subject matter - agreements on return or redemption obligations and repurchase agreements.
The core of the MaH was the requirement for a functional and organizational separation of trading , processing , risk controlling (sometimes referred to as monitoring in the MaH) and accounting . It also specified in detail what information on risk positions must be made available to management on a working day basis.
A weak point of the MaH was that the regulations for risk monitoring and control were strictly speaking only related to trading transactions, which did not go far enough in questions of overall bank control . This point has been resolved with the entry into force of MaRisk.