Herstatt Bank significant event bankruptcy
Herstatt Bank (Bankhaus I.D. Herstatt K.G.a.A.) was a privately owned bank in the German city of Cologne. It went bankrupt on 26 June 1974, an event widely referred to as the Herstatt crisis. Herstatt's failure specifically highlighted the importance of settlement risk in foreign-exchange markets, which became correspondingly known as Herstatt risk.
The Herstatt crisis had important policy consequences. In the subsequent months of 1974, Germany established the Liquiditäts-Konsortialbank and, at the international level, central bankers created the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. With considerably more delay, concerns about Herstatt risk were revived in the late 1980s and 1990s and resulted in the creation of CLS Bank, operational since 2002 as a global foreign exchange market settlement utility.Crisis and liquidation
On 26 June 1974, German regulators forced the troubled Bank Herstatt into liquidation. That day, a number of banks had released payment of Deutsche Marks (DEM) to Herstatt in Frankfurt in exchange for US dollars (USD) that were to be delivered in New York. The bank was closed at 16:30 German time, which was 10:30 New York time. Because of time zone differences, Herstatt ceased operations between the times of the respective payments. The counterparty banks did not receive their USD payments.