Lombard loans on Deutsche Börse.
Private, securities-backed credit against Deutsche Börse-listed shares — pledged, not sold.
A Lombard loan against Deutsche Börse-listed shares is credit secured by a pledge of equity listed on Deutsche Börse / Frankfurter Wertpapierbörse. The holder pledges the shares, draws cash against a fraction of their market value, retains ownership and dividends subject to structuring, and recovers the position on repayment. In plainer terms it is a share-backed loan: a loan against shares, not a disposal of them. Private banks call the practice Lombard lending.
- Facilities are arranged against equity listed on Deutsche Börse / Frankfurter Wertpapierbörse (FWB), Frankfurt.
- The pledge preserves ownership, dividends, and the upside for the holder.
- Loan-to-value is set per line; funded in EUR or cross-currency.
- Structured under the BaFin regime, with disclosure at 3%.
The venue
Deutsche Börse is continental Europe's deepest equity market, with Xetra as the dominant pan-European electronic trading venue. The WpHG voting-rights notification regime gives German positions a particularly granular disclosure footprint compared with peer markets.
Regulator and disclosure
Deutsche Börse / Frankfurter Wertpapierbörse operates under the Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht (BaFin). Wertpapierhandelsgesetz Sections 33 et seq.: voting-rights notifications required at 3%, then 5%, 10%, 15%, 20%, 25%, 30%, 50%, 75%. A pledge over a substantial line is arranged with that reporting regime in view, so that the facility is both discreet and compliant, and so that positions near a control or takeover threshold are not disturbed.
For who must report a pledge, and what an enforcement would make public, in each market the firm covers, see the comparison of share pledge disclosure rules.
Structuring a facility here
Lombard facilities against Deutsche Börse-listed shares are typically arranged for a tenor of twelve to thirty-six months, funded in EUR or another currency on a cross-currency basis, with the collateral held by a qualified custodian under bankruptcy-remote arrangements. Non-recourse, limited-recourse, and full-recourse structures are available; the choice interacts with the loan-to-value and the spread. Unlike a stock loan in the securities-lending sense, title does not pass: the line stays registered to the holder for the life of the facility.
| Exchange | Deutsche Börse / Frankfurter Wertpapierbörse (FWB) |
|---|---|
| City · Country | Frankfurt · Germany |
| Regulator | Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht (BaFin) |
| Disclosure | Substantial holdings at 3% |
| Principal indices | DAX, MDAX, SDAX, TecDAX |
| Segments | Prime Standard (full EU transparency); General Standard; Scale (growth segment) |
| Currency · Tenor | EUR · 12–36 months |
| Recourse | Non-recourse / limited-recourse / full-recourse |
The Germany market as a whole
The Germany country overview sets Deutsche Börse in context: the national disclosure regime, the wider securities-backed lending picture, and the common ground behind any loan against shares listed in Germany.
- Lombard loans in Germany — the country overview: the national disclosure regime, currency, and how a facility is arranged.
Financing a position listed on Deutsche Börse?
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On this market, specifically.
Liquidity and the index
Frankfurt is continental Europe's deepest equity pool, and Xetra is the electronic order book where most of that turnover forms. The DAX blue chips, with MDAX and SDAX beneath, give the leading names ample free float and daily volume — comfortable ground for a Lombard loan of real size, since our hedging and any unwind stay well inside normal trading. The Prime Standard segment, with its full EU transparency, dominates the institutional universe; liquidity is thinner on General Standard and the Scale growth segment, where we take a more cautious advance rate and size the facility accordingly.
Structuring notes
Settlement runs through Clearstream, Deutsche Börse's own depository, which makes a Lombard credit against German equity operationally straightforward: the shares are pledged into a controlled account while ownership, dividends and votes stay with the client. The defining local feature is disclosure depth — the WpHG step structure records voting-rights positions in fine detail — so where a holding approaches the lower thresholds we structure the facility and any collateral calls to avoid triggering a notification the client did not intend. Prime Standard listings bring the fullest transparency, which we factor into how a large position is financed.