as rapidly as possible by advertising internally and externally and by allocating more junior staff to the area. allow me to mention one last point. who will pay for the new european supervisory authority? how can the costs be distributed fairly across institutions, and what is the right allocation key? in my opinion, all banks should be involved, albeit in proportion to their size and risk weight. a level playing field can be guaranteed only if supervisory activity is exercised appropriately, ie in proportion to a bank ’ s size and risk. the bundesbank is particularly committed to this objective, but our ecb colleagues have also stressed this to be a concern. ultimately, however, smaller institutions will also benefit from the single supervisory mechanism, even if they are not supervised by the ecb directly. 4. conclusion ladies and gentlemen we have set ourselves an ambitious goal, to make the financial system more stable. the banking union is, without doubt, one of the largest steps towards achieving this objective. i am confident that it will get off to a smooth start when the single supervisory mechanism is launched on 4 november. then, when the single resolution mechanism starts its work in 2016, we will have gone a long way towards creating a more stable financial system. however, there is still a lot of work to be done. thank you very much. bis central bankers ’ speeches

the ecb will take on direct responsibility for supervising the 120 most significant euro - area banks from 4 november. what does that mean for germany? first, bafin and the bundesbank will continue to directly supervise around 2, 000 smaller german credit institutions ; second, we will hand over direct supervisory responsibility for the 21 german ssm banks to the ecb, but will continue to provide them with ongoing supervision ; third, we will be involved in supervising the 99 foreign ssm banks. how will that work in practice? supervision of the ssm banks will pass to what are known as joint supervisory teams. these teams will be headed by an ecb coordinator. under current plans, the coordinator of a joint supervisory team may not come from the country in which the supervised bank is headquartered. the teams themselves are largely made up of staff from the national competent authorities. the bundesbank and bafin will consequently continue to supervise the german ssm banks. that ensures that national supervisors ’ expertise is not lost. in terms of the bundesbank, it is not just our know - how and experience that count, but also the fact that we have offices in those locations where the banks are headquartered and operate – whether that be munich or hamburg. the ssm ’ s clout hinges on the people behind it. and herein, too, lies a major challenge. the ecb is planning to employ around 770 staff for the new supervisory body. in addition, it is looking for some 200 employees to undertake support functions. given the proximity, moving to the ecb is, of course, particularly attractive for bundesbank staff working in frankfurt. so far, 48 colleagues have taken up regular ssm positions, nine of which are managerial positions, including one deputy dg post, while 32 have taken working level positions and 7 are employed in support functions. in addition, 19 bundesbank staff are currently seconded to the ecb to assist with the ssm on a temporary basis. a very prominent example of a bundesbanker currently working for the ecb is, of course, our former deputy president, sabine lautenschlager. as the majority of the selection decisions are yet to be taken, we expect more bundesbank staff to switch to the ecb by november. to fill the resultant gaps, we carried out what we refer to as “ frontloading ” at the beginning of the year. our plan is to fill any vacancies that arise in the meantime