Luxembourg is prepared to ease its banking secrecy rules and work more closely with foreign tax authorities, its finance minister has told a newspaper, in a comment welcomed by Germany which wants to crack down on tax havens.

Luc Frieden told yesterday's Frankfurt er Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung there was an international trend towards automatically exchanging depositor information. "We no longer strictly reject this, in contrast to before. Luxembourg does not rely on clients who want to save tax."

Austria and Luxembourg are the only European Union states that do not share with other EU members the identities of EU residents with cross-border bank accounts. – (Reuters)