“Commerzbank AG (CBK), the German bank forced to raise capital five times in the past four years, fell the most since March on concern that exposure to southern European debt may add to its financial woes.
Commerzbank dropped as much as 6.9 percent to 5.73 euros in Frankfurt, the lowest intraday price on record and taking losses this year to 46 percent. The 47-member Stoxx 600 Banks Index fell 3 percent.
“There seems to be renewed concern about holdings of peripheral bonds in Italy, Spain and Portugal given the public finance exposure the bank has,” Riccardo Rovere, an analyst at Mediobanca SpA (MB), said by telephone from Milan.
Commerzbank’s declines were surpassed only by lenders in Portugal and Spain in a sell-off sparked by the second resignation of a Portuguese government minister in two days, which sent the country’s 10-year bond yield to 8 percent for the first time since November.
Commerzbank had 2.9 billion euros ($3.8 billion) of exposure to debt in Portugal and 12.2 billion euros to Spain at the end of March, company filings show. Those figures combine sovereign, banking, commercial real estate and other debt.
