Oil down, shredding weekly gain, as banking crisis again rears ugly head

By Barani Krishnan

Investing.com - Crude prices fell a second day in a row Friday, limiting their rebound from last week’s plunge, as concerns about Deutsche Bank (ETR:DBKGn) reignited the U.S.-to-Europe banking crisis, sending American financial authorities into a huddle on what to do next.

New York-traded West Texas Intermediate, or WTI, crude settled down 70 cents, or 1%, at $69.28 per after hitting as low as $66.85 earlier in the session. It was the second day in a row that WTI fell about a percent or more at the close. 

Notwithstanding the slide in the past two sessions, the U.S. crude benchmark finished the week up 3.8%, after factoring in gains from the first three days of the week. Last week, WTI lost almost 10% on the back of the banking crisis.

London-traded Brent crude settled down 92 cents, or 1.2%, at $74.99, after a session low at $72.69. For the week, Brent finished up 2.8% after last week’s near 10% tumble.

Deutsche Bank's shares and bonds plunged on Friday, as investors turned wary of some European banks in the aftermath of Credit Suisse's (NYSE:CS) troubles.

"Deutsche Bank is under pressure now. People are repositioning, unloading weak links. People want to avoid anything that could come under focus," Jon Jonsson, a credit portfolio manager at Neuberger Berman, said in comments carried by the Wall Street Journal.

The German bank's riskier debt also declined in price, WSJ reported. One of the bank’s additional tier 1 bonds traded at an all-time low, according to Tradeweb data and the cost of insuring Deutsche Bank debt against default, as measured by credit-default swap prices, extended a recent surge.

In the United States, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen got the country’s financial regulators on the so-called Financial Stability Oversight Council into a huddle, to decide on next steps.

The banking crisis erupted two weeks ago with the takeover of two mid-sized lenders — Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank — by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, or FDIC, as depositors yanked billions of dollars from them after fearing for their solvency. Silicon Valley later filed for bankruptcy protection despite the rescue by FDIC. Since then, other U.S. banks, First Republic Bank (NYSE:FRC) and PacWest Bancorp (NASDAQ:PACW), have faced deposit runs as well.

The crisis also took on an international dimension after Zurich-based Credit Suisse, one of the world’s preeminent names in investment banking, faced solvency issues and had to be bought by rival UBS of Switzerland.

The crisis is particularly significant to oil and other commodities, which depend heavily on banks to provide liquidity.