December 15, 2008

German stocks gained for the first time in three days as European Union regulators approved the country’s revised bank-rescue plan and U.S. President George W. Bush signaled a swift decision on a carmaker bailout.Deutsche Bank AG gained the most in a week after Germany’s largest bank was also granted a wholesale banking license in the United Arab Emirates. Commerzbank AG, the country’s second- largest lender, snapped a three-day decline. Daimler AG and Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, the world’s biggest luxury carmakers, rose for the first time in three days.

The benchmark DAX Index climbed 79.27, or 1.7 percent, to 4,742.64 as of 12:48 p.m. in Frankfurt. DAX futures expiring on Dec. 19 gained 1.6 percent. The broader HDAX Index added 1.7 percent to 2,349.3.President Bush said deliberations on tapping the U.S. bank bailout fund to keep General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC afloat “won’t be a long process.”

“We are talking about really big companies of the U.S. economy and no one actually knows what consequences would follow if one of the Big Three goes bust uncontrolled,” Michael Scholz, an equity strategist at WestLB AG in Dusseldorf said on Bloomberg Television.