Pedestrians walk past a stock ticker outside the stock exchange in Hong Kong. Markets opened with sharp losses for banks. Photograph: EPAEurope’s main stock market indices fell sharply on Monday, weighed down by tumbling banking stocks as investors digested the details of Swiss investment bank UBS’s historic takeover of its rival, Credit Suisse, and assessed the risk of contagion.
UBS agreed to buy Credit Suisse for €3 billion on Sunday after a frantic weekend of negotiations brokered by Swiss regulators to safeguard its banking system and attempt to prevent a crisis spreading across global financial markets. Shares in the bank tumbled as much as 15 per cent when markets opened on Monday amid concerns about the health of the balance sheet it acquired after five days of panic.
Bank stocks declined across Europe with Spanish banks BBVA and Santander, their French counterpart BNP Paribas and Dutch ING Groep all down by between 4 per cent and 9 per cent.