Italian Watchdog to Investigate Plunge in Country’s Bank Stocks
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Italy’s markets watchdog said it will investigate trading in bank shares after the country’s biggest lenders posted their largest decline in two years.
Part of the slump was due to automatic stop-loss trades, an official for the regulator said by telephone today. The watchdog hasn’t ruled out market manipulation. UniCredit SpA, Italy’s biggest bank, and Intesa Sanpaolo SpA, the second-largest, led lenders lower, falling 5.5 percent and 4.3 percent respectively. Both stocks were briefly suspended after breaching limits on intraday swings.