Consequences of the banking crisis for Frankfurt

Dhe decline and the multi-billion dollar rescue operation for the major Swiss bank CreditSuisse have caused uncertainty in the financial center and raised questions about the consequences for Frankfurt, but also about the stability of the banks based here. The Frankfurt finance professor Volker Brühl, managing director of the Center for Financial Studies in Frankfurt, currently sees “no great danger for Commerzbank and Deutsche Bank”, and he can also see “no relevant wobbly candidates” in the entire euro zone. This also has to do with regulatory initiatives since the financial crisis, thanks to which banks in the European Union have become much more robust, for example with regard to liquidity and equity. Banking supervision in the European Union was much more intensive than that of the Swiss regulator Finma.

The crisis in neighboring Switzerland could possibly even be an opportunity for the local financial center. “Deutsche Bank should benefit from the fact that a competitor is eliminated,” predicts Hubertus Väth, Managing Director of the Frankfurt Main Finance initiative. Volker Brühl doesn’t think that’s out of the question either. The healthy one UBS will be involved with the integration of Credit Suisse for five to ten years. “Therein lies an opportunity for our banks, above all for Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank, but also for DZ Bank and to some extent also for Landesbanken.”