The bank has included a new risk in its annual report.
(Photo: imago images/Ralph Peters)
Frankfurt “To […] existential threats counts for Commerzbank due to its business model, for example […] a tactical nuclear attack on Frankfurt am Main, Germany’s neuralgic financial center.” This sentence recently appeared in Commerzbank’s annual report. The bank published its 2022 report on Monday this week. First he Bloomberg reporter Steven Arons on Twitter reported on the short message service Twitter.
The risk was not yet mentioned in the annual report for 2021, published in March 2022 and thus shortly after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Specifically, the tactical nuclear attack on Frankfurt is now mentioned in the chapter on “Risk strategy and risk management”. However, the bank does not go further into the risk in the report. Among existential risks, she also counts a “failure of Germany”, the “collapse of the euro zone” and other catastrophes.
When asked, a spokeswoman for the bank said about the nuclear threat: “Due to the geopolitical situation and the increasing proliferation of nuclear weapons and the neuralgic importance of Frankfurt, this scenario was mentioned.” would threaten.
After the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, various states began to build up their military. Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly threatened to use nuclear weapons. Since the delivery of weapons to Ukraine, there has been a debate in Germany about the dangers of a nuclear war between the western defense alliance NATO and Russia.
Explicitly no strategy against a possible nuclear strike
According to the annual report, the bank actually intends to develop strategies against existential threats in order to reduce the extent of the damage. However, with a view to the risk of a nuclear attack, the spokeswoman writes that the bank is “explicitly not making any preparations here because the probability is assessed as extremely low”.
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In the annual report, Commerzbank differentiates between risks that threaten the existence of the Group and those that cause significant economic damage. The aim of the chapter “Risk strategy and risk management” is to inform the Management Board and the Risk Committee of the Supervisory Board about risks. In it, “important developments” are regularly addressed, as the chapter states.
A paragraph on the risks of climate change for Commerzbank was added to the annual report for 2021 compared to the annual report for 2020. In the annual report for 2020, Commerzbank added the economic risks that could arise from a pandemic compared to 2019. The corona pandemic caused a global recession in 2020 because many governments subsequently imposed lockdowns, disrupting supply chains.
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