EU concerned over German bank regulato

The European Commission is concerned that Germany's banking supervisor could be restricting the free flow of capital to lenders abroad, a newspaper report said on Thursday. The Commission and the European Banking Authority (EBA) are looking into whether Germany's BaFin banking regulator is curbing the amount of money that can be transferred from bank subsidiaries in Germany to their foreign-based parent bank, Handelsblatt business daily said. It said BaFin wanted to avoid a bank which falls under its oversight in Germany running into problems if its parent company begins to teeter. The report cited a spokesman for EU Financial Markets Commissioner Michel Barnier as saying the Commission and EBA were checking into the matter. "We are concerned," it quoted the spokesman as saying. Banca d'Italia has raised the issue within the EBA, which covers all 27 EU states, the paper said citing unidentified supervisory sources.