We are back. Commerzbank considered this line for its return to the Dax. “Commerzbank is back where it belongs,” CEO Manfred Knof reiterated his claim in his speech on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange floor. The almost shameful situation with only one bank in the Dax (“our blue friends”) has ended. “Our yellow enriches the color palette again.” Commerzbank came to stay.
Bettina Orlopp, who is responsible for finances on the Commerzbank board, was a little more defensive: “It cannot be taken for granted that we will remain in the index, we must not rest, there is still a lot of work ahead of us, profitability is not where it is we would like to have them.” However, the bank’s return to profitability also creates scope: “We want to become a reliable dividend payer again and also buy back shares.”
In his speech, stock exchange board member Thomas Book reminded us that a return to the Dax was possible at all: “More than 100 percent price increase since you took office, Mr. Knof, Team Yellow is back.” Since the beginning of 2021, when Manfred took office Knof, the Commerzbank share rose from around EUR 5.60 to a good EUR 11. This brought her 33rd place in the stock exchange’s current ranking for the composition of the Dax and thus the successor to Linde in the Dax.
Founding member sits at the top of the Dax
Manfred Knof insisted on ringing the stock exchange bell alone at the opening of trading on Monday, accompanied by cheers from the numerous visitors on the trading floor. In line with the exuberant mood, Commerzbank’s share price rose by 4 percent right at the start of trading and took the lead in the Dax, to which the bank had belonged for a good 30 years since the index was founded in 1988 until the summer of 2018. The Dax itself was also in a friendly mood and rose by 1.5 percent to 15,440 points.
Linde with a weight of 9 percent left the index on Friday evening. In the future, the share will only be tradable in New York. The feared price turbulence for Linde and the Dax did not materialize. The Linde share price even rose by almost 4 percent in the closing auction on Friday. Since Monday, Commerzbank has taken the place, with a market value of the freely tradable shares of a good 10 billion euros, but not with the Linde weight, which weighed in at 160 billion euros, but only with a 0.9 percent share of the index, as the investment bank Stifel Europe has calculated. However, the bank is not the smallest Dax value, Fresenius Medical Care and Continental are there with 0.6 percent each.
The biggest beneficiary next to Commerzbank from the Linde farewell is SAP, whose share in the Dax increases from 8.65 to 9.4 percent. The exchange-traded index funds (ETF) also had to buy shares from Siemens, which followed in second place with 9.3 percent. Allianz now comes in third place with a 7.3 percent share of the Dax, Airbus comes with 6.2 percent and Telekom with 6 percent.