re: Deutsche Bank Litigation / Bailout Watch

The DAX rose 0.74% today on news of the agreement from Deutsche Bank to sell its U.K. insurance business for $1.2 billion: LINK.

That helped lift U.S. markets as well today, along with the OPEC news, despite the market dropping for a bit when Yellen made hawkish comments in her testimony: LINK.

The following article gives a pretty good indication of the impact of the sale...

Bloomberg: " Why People Have Been Worrying About Deutsche Bank, in 12 Charts"

quote:

---

The catalyst for the recent selloff appears to be Chancellor Angela Merkel's comments, reported by Focus magazine last week, in which she ruled out state assistance for the bank. Earlier this month Deutsche was hit by a $14 billion U.S. Department of Justice claim to settle the allegedly fraudulent selling and origination of mortgage-backed securities before the financial crisis.

Chief Executive Officer John Cryan has said the lender has no intention of paying a figure of that magnitude, and is redoubling efforts to both cut costs and sell assets. On Wednesday, the bank's shares opened higher for the first time in almost a week after it agreed to sell its U.K. insurance unit Abbey Life Assurance Co. — a move which will boost the bank's Tier 1 capital ratio by about 10 basis points.

---

Alles klar für Deutsche Bank?

Probably not, but as a previous article noted, this deterioration of the balance sheet has been an extremely slow process, not at all like the relatively rapid deteriorations that occurred with Bear Stearns and Lehman.