The fallout on German banks from Deutsche Bank's decision to freeze a troubled 6-billion-euro ($7.1 billion) property fund this month is limited, Bundesbank board member Edgar Meister said in a newspaper interview on December 27 .
"Investors have kept a cool head and did not withdraw money in droves. The damage to confidence is clearly limited," Meister told the Handelsblatt business daily.
Earlier this month, Deutsche Bank's property investment arm DB Real Estate barred investors in its Grundbesitz-Invest fund - mostly a collection of German property - from selling out, saying it needed until February to work out if the investments were correctly valued.
German newspapers have reported that a second DB Real Estate fund, Grundbesitz-Global, which had a volume of 3.66 billion euros at the end of September, has seen outflows of around 500 million euros in recent weeks.
But a DB Real Estate spokesman said on Friday there were no plans to close this fund, which he said was still expecting to see a good performance.
The spokesman said Grundbesitz-Global had been affected by the freezing of the Grundbesitz-Invest fund, but declined to confirm the 500-million-euro figure. Outflows from the fund, which was not invested in the difficult German property market, had stabilised, he added.
The Bundesbank's Meister said the troubles in the German commercial property market appeared to be coming to a close.
"The downward trend in the commercial property market appears to have slowed down considerably. In some regions, you can already see that a bottom has formed," he said.
Meister also said Germany's banks needed to ensure they maintain margins in their lending business, but he said they had made progress and that this reduces the likelihood of take-overs by foreign banks.