Germany said it will ask the Securities and Exchange Commission for information in a case in which Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is accused of defrauding investors, potentially as a prelude to legal action. "First we must ask for the documents, then evaluate [them] and then decide about legal steps," said a spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel, confirming a report in German newspaper Welt am Sonntag on Saturday. The U.S. government alleges Goldman Sachs sold mortgage investments without telling buyers they were crafted with input from a client who was betting against them. Germany's interest in the case stems from the fact that German lender IKB Deutsche Industriebank AG bought a significant amount of the collateralized debt obligations in question, contributing to IKB's heavy losses on U.S. mortgage-related securities. Those losses led to a â¬3.5 billion ($4.73 billion) bailout of IKB in mid-2007, with most of the money coming from IKB's major shareholder, German state bank KfW. IKB's near-failure marked the start of an escalating banking crisis in Germany in 2007, which found that numerous state and private-sector banks in Europe's biggest economy had invested and lost heavily in U.S. mortgage-related securities. The losses undermined German officials' claims that the subprime-mortgage crisis was a U.S. problem, and forced Germany to announce a â¬500 billion bailout of its banking sector in October 2008. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100...313847540680.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLTopStories