This paper shows that central bank information effects, i.e. the impact of the central bank's economic commentary on expectations, are important for understanding the transatlantic spillovers of monetary policy. Information effects account for most of the co-movement of German and US government bond yields around the days of ECB policy announcements. By contrast, around the days of Fed policy announcements both information effects and standard monetary policy shocks are important. This asymmetry is also confirmed by the responses of a range of financial and macroeconomic variables in monthly vector autoregressions.