Germany seeks alternatives to financial transaction tax

(FRANKFURT) - German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said Friday he would seek alternatives to a cross-border tax on the finance industry that has run into fierce resistance in Europe.

Speaking to public broadcaster SWR in an interview to be transmitted on Saturday, Schaeuble appeared to back down on a French-led initiative for a financial transactions tax (FTT), acknowledging it would be nigh on impossible to push through at a European level.

"Instead, I will now back equal alternatives, such as extended stock market tax and one which has the broadest possible backing," Schaeuble said.

The proposals for a cross-border tax on banks and other finance houses have come into stiff resistance from Britain, whose City of London is home to 80 percent of Europe's finance industry, and Sweden.

The tax is aimed at making the money-men pay their way in the future after banks especially benefited heavily from taxpayer bailouts when the mortgage meltdown in the United States triggered the 2008 global financial crisis.

France and eight other countries -- Austria, Belgium, Finland, Germany, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain -- argue that the tax is necessary "to ensure a fair contribution from the financial sector to the costs of the financial crisis, but also to improve the regulation of markets."