Credit Suisse Shares Fall on CMBS Concerns

It’s pretty clear that 2008 is starting off with everyone looking left, looking right, looking up, looking down — trying desperately to make sure they’re on solid footing and that the mortgage-led mess causing problems for many isn’t reaching further into the financial markets. Case in point: concern over commercial real estate has seemingly already reached a fever pitch. HW has published four stories alone in the past week on the issue. That concern hit Swiss bank Credit Suisse today, one of the largest i-banks in the CMBS market. Reuters reported Monday that shares of Credit Suisse fell 3 percent on a report in Swiss Sunday newspaper Sonntag which predicted writedowns tied to commercial mortgage exposure. For its part, the bank has said it believes such exposure is manageable; I suppose the question here, of course, is what the nature of that exposure is. If primarily in CMBS, that’s one thing. If in CREL CDO, that’s entirely another. (If you’re confused by the above, I’d recommend reading this post.)