This paper examines the effects of the U.S. financial crisis on global lending to retail customers. In particular we examine retail bank lending in Germany taking advantage of a unique dataset of German savings banks over the period 2006-2008 for which we have the universe of loan applications and loans granted in this time period. Our experimental setting allows us to distinguish between those savings banks affected by the U.S. financial crisis, through their holdings in Landesbanken with substantial subprime exposure, and unaffected savings banks. We are further able to distinguish between demand and supply side effects of bank lending. We find demand for loans goes down but is not substantially different for the affected and non-affected banks. We find evidence of a supply side effect in that the affected banks reject substantially more loan applications than non-affected banks. This effect is particularly strong for mortgage as compared to consumer loans as well as for customers with worse credit ratings. We also find that bank-customer relationships help mitigate these supply side effects.