At that time there were ominous articles beginning "If the unthinkable happens and there is a Brexit Germany will be bankrupt in three years", if this is the case then we may be in for very difficult times ahead.
From the Telegraph today:-
Deutsche Bank has been wobbly for a year now. Back in July, it announced a slump in profits and revenues. Back in February, the Bank’s co-CEO John Cryan put out a statement re-assuring staff and investors that the institution was ‘rock solid’ amid an earlier slide in the share price. Anyone whose memory stretches back a whole eight years will know that is the kind of thing bank CEOs say about three minutes before the whole thing goes pop.
Ever since then, the news has gone from bad to worse. Deutsche has struggled to cuts costs and restore profitability, legal challenges have mounted, and then earlier this month the US Justice Department hit the bank with a $14 billion fine over sales of mortgage securities. In its pomp, Deutsche could have written out a cheque with a nonchalant shrug. Right now, no one is sure where it can get the money from.
The damage can be seen in its share price. Last October, the shares were at 27 euros. Back in 2007, they were over 100 euros, and even in the spring of 2009, when banks were crashing all across the world, they were still trading at close on 17 euros. For most of this year they have been sliding fast. On Monday, they crashed again, down another 6pc. Its bonds have slumped as well, while the cost of credit default swaps – essentially a way of hedging against a collapse – have jumped. It all has a very 2008 feel to it.
To make matters worse, the German government looks to have abandoned it to its grisly fate. An article in Focus magazine quoted senior officials as saying the German Chancellor Angela Merkel was adamant that bank would not be rescued. There could be no state assistance if the bank was unable to raise the capital it needs to stay afloat, and she was not planning to intervene to get the American fine reduced. If it was in trouble, it was on its own.
There is, of course, something to be said for a hard-line position. It is hard to be sure the massive bank bail-outs of 2008 were such a great idea. Perhaps we would be better off now if a few had been allowed to fail. That said, Merkel is surely playing with fire. In the markets, investors, along with other financial institutions, have rightly or wrongly come to assume that major banks are, as the saying has it, ‘too big to fail’. You didn’t really have to worry about how solid they were, because if the crunch came the state would always ride to the rescue.
In Germany, that appears not to be the case – certainly for Deutsche, and possibly for its next biggest player, Commerzbank, which is hardly looking much healthier. Would you want to trade a few billion with Deutsche right now, and would you feel sure you’d get paid next month? Nope, thought not. The risk is that confidence evaporates – and as we know, once that is gone a bank is not long for this world