The titanic struggles of German banking

FEATURES
	Germany’s banks go down with the ship
	Rates put Germany’s financial ecosystem at risk

Introduction:

When fears over the size of a Deutsche Bank fine coincided in late September with news of a drastic business restructuring at Commerzbank, it seemed like the crisis in European banking had suddenly shifted north. 

The problems facing Germany’s two biggest private-sector banks are of course different. But they are both symptomatic of the lack of profitability afflicting the three pillars of German banking. 

Low interest rates are a pan-eurozone problem, but German banks are more vulnerable than most because of their reliance on net interest margin and because their return on equity is already only in the low single digits; higher only than Greece and Portugal, according to the European Banking Authority.