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Deutsche Bank: Will it bust?


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You can always count on the banks to screw things up royally! 

 

Gold inched up on Friday as equities fell on the back of worries about the health of Deutsche Bank, spurring some safe-haven demand for the yellow metal, but a firmer dollar capped gains and the metal was on track to end the week down over 1 percent.

 

Spot gold had risen 0.2 percent to $1,322.80 an ounce by 0439 GMT. It has risen 1 percent in September.

 

U.S. gold futures were mostly flat at $1,326.40 an ounce.

 

Deutsche Bank shares slumped to a record low after a report that trading clients had withdrawn excess cash and positions held in the largest German lender.

 

"Probably the news on Deutsche Bank is spurring some buying," said Ronald Leung, chief dealer, Lee Cheong Gold Dealers in Hong Kong.

 

"Gold might trade in the range of $1,310-$1,340 until China comes back from holidays," he added.

 

China's markets will be closed starting on Oct. 1 for the National holidays and resume trading on Oct. 10.

 

"Gold is probably going to trade side ways for some time," said Brian Lan, managing director at Singapore-based gold dealer GoldSilver Central, adding that the charts were providing mixed signals.

 

"If stocks aren't doing well then we might see a little support for gold."

 

Asian stocks followed Wall Street lower in early trade on Friday, while oil prices held close to the highest level in almost a month on optimism over an OPEC plan to curb output.

 

U.S. economic growth was less sluggish than previously thought in the second quarter as exports grew more than imports and businesses raised their investments. However, contracts to buy previously owned U.S. homes dropped in August to the lowest level since January

 

When positive data is released, investors raise bets on a U.S. interest rate hike, which would increase the opportunity cost of holding non-yielding bullion.

 

"Any downward move in global equity markets in light of higher interest rates and over stretched equity valuations could result in a renewed move higher for gold...a stronger dollar could keep any over sized rallies somewhat in check," INTL FCStone analyst Edward Meir said in a note.

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German business leaders have thrown their weight behind Deutsche Bank after a week of market turmoil in which shares in the country’s biggest bank were dragged to 30-year lows on fears it will be crippled by a $14bn (£10.5bn) penalty from the US authorities.

 

Amid concern the plight of Deutsche could wreak havoc across the globe, investors and policymakers will focus on any attempts by the bank’s chief executive, John Cryan, to agree a settlement over the decade-old mis-selling scandal when he is in Washington this week.

 

Cryan, a Briton who has been running Deutsche for almost 15 months, is expected to be in Washington to join other top bankers and policymakers at the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). His presence is sparking speculation that a deal with the Department of Justice will be clinched soon – although executives from Deutsche travel to the high-level meeting every year.

 

Over the weekend, business leaders spoke to German newspapers to back Cryan’s efforts to turn around Deutsche, which is a linchpin of the national economy. It is about half the size of the German economy at approximately €1.8tn, but because of its pummelling on the stock market it is valued by investors at barely €16bn. The IMF has described it as the world’s most systemically important bank.

 

The bank’s shares rallied sharply late on Friday after a report by AFP news agency – on which neither Deutsche nor the DoJ would comment – that the settlement for the residential mortgage-backed securities scandal would be a more manageable $5.4bn.

 

Ever since the $14bn figure was revealed last month Deutsche has been a concern to investors but the slide in the shares escalated last week after reports – strenuously denied – that the bank had asked the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, for assistance.

 

Last week Cryan wrote to the bank’s 100,000 staff – at least 7,000 of whom are based in the UK – to attack “forces in the market” trying to destabilise the bank, after Bloomberg reported 10 hedge funds were reducing their business dealing with the bank. German markets are closed on Monday.

 

On Sunday Jürgen Hambrecht, chairman of chemical company BASF told Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszietung (FASZ): “The German industry needs a German bank that accompanies us out into the world.”

 

“Deutsche Bank has a great tradition, a solid base and, building on that, also a good future. I’m convinced of that,” Dieter Zetsche, the chief executive of carmaker Daimler said. 

 

Peter Ramsauer, chairman of the German parliament’s economics committee, also talked about the “economic warlike traits” of the US approach. 

 

The US presidential elections next month are being regarded as a potential deadline for reaching an agreement with the DoJ, which has already settled with a number of US banks, including Goldman Sachs.

 

The Financial Times reported last week that Credit Suisse and Barclays could also be part of a settlement. Bailed-out Royal Bank of Scotland has warned that it too may need to reach a settlement with the DoJ, which some analysts have calculated could cost £9bn. As recently as last week, Ross McEwan, the chief executive of RBS, said settlement talks with the DoJ had not begun, although the 73% taxpayer-owned bank did pay £846m to the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) over the scandal.

 

Even once the bond mis-selling settlement is reached, Deutsche Bank faces an investigation into its activities in Russia, while over the weekend some former and current staff were charged in Milan in connection with Italy’s Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA for colluding to falsify the accounts of Italy’s third-biggest bank and manipulate the market.

 

The situation of Italy’s banks has also been a focus for Germany’s media as it plays down the need for Merkel to bail out Deutsche. “Of course Chancellor Merkel doesn’t want to give Deutsche Bank any state aid. She cannot afford it from the point of view of foreign policy because Berlin is taking a hard line in the Italian bank rescue,” Reuters reported the Frankfurter Allgemeine as saying.

 

Germany’s head banking regulator, Felix Hufeld of BaFin, has urged citizens not to panic about the situation.

 

“I warn people not to let themselves be drawn into a kind of downward spiral of negative perception. Not every nervous market reaction is backed by objective facts,” he told FASZ, without directly naming Deutsche itself.

 

Souce: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/oct/02/german-business-leaders-offer-support-to-deutsche-bank

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