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U.S. stock markets fell Friday morning after concerns about the banking sector’s health continued to reverberate through Europe, despite regulators’ assurances on both continents that the sector remains strong.
Shares of Deutsche Bank, a major European financial institution founded 153 years ago, fell as much as 15 percent Friday morning even though the bank said it would pay back one of its riskier bonds. By the end of the day, the stock had somewhat recovered from those losses and closed down 3.1 percent.
The Dow Jones industrial average, S&P 500 and Nasdaq composite index all fell more than 0.7 percent in trading Friday morning before making up those losses later in the day. Broader European markets took a bigger hit, with the STOXX Europe 600 down around 1.37 percent. The index includes Deutsche Bank and other major European lenders.
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Still, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Friday brushed aside fears of broader turmoil, saying there is “no reason to be concerned.”
“Deutsche Bank has modernized and organized the way it works,” he told reporters after a summit of European Union leaders, according to CNN. “It’s a very profitable bank.”
The bank’s stock slip is just the latest episode in two weeks of mounting turmoil as the global banking sector has been rocked by upheaval in the United States and Europe. Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank of New York collapsed earlier this month, spiking concern in similar midsize banks. Then Swiss bank Credit Suisse faltered and was taken over by UBS in an emergency government-engineered deal.
“Investors are panicking; they’re swarming from bank to bank, asking ‘what’s the next troubled one?’” said Mayra Rodriguez Valladares, a banking industry expert and adviser at MRV Associates. “Deutsche Bank has always been an easy one to pick on because of its long history of troubles.”
Those troubles include major public scandals in recent years, including allegations of tax fraud and money laundering. In September, the bank agreed to pay $26.25 million to settle shareholders’ complaints that it had acted irresponsibly in taking on “high-risk” clients such as convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. A month later, German authorities raided Deutsche Bank’s Frankfurt headquarters as part of an investigation into an alleged tax fraud scheme.
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A spokesman for Deutsche Bank declined to comment.
Still, Deutsche Bank appears to be on stronger footing than it was a few years ago, Rodriguez Valladares said. The bank recently underwent a sweeping overhaul that included thousands of job cuts and has posted 10 straight quarters of profits. Also to its advantage, she noted, are its size and standing as a “systemically important bank.”
“Unlike Silicon Valley Bank, which relied almost solely on deposits from tech companies, Deutsche Bank has many sources of funding — it has deposits, short-term loans, short-term liquidities, credit facilities, notes outstanding, bonds outstanding — and in this environment, that’s absolutely key,” she said.
Source link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/03/24/deutsche-bank-shares-slide-markets/