The Deutsche Bank social media team has caused a Twitter storm after moving to deny a story published by conspiracy blog Zero Hedge that it was on the verge of collapse.
The Zero Hedge post in question was headlined 'The Deutsche Bank Death Watch Has Taken A Very Interesting Turn', and opened with the line: "The biggest bank in Europe is in the process of imploding, and there are persistent rumors that the final collapse could happen sooner rather than later."
Likening Deutsche bank's travails to that of Lehman Brothers before its collapse, the Zero Hedge take presented the giant German bank as a zombie institution on the brink of a catastrophic ruination that would bring down the entire financial system.
Zero Hedge has past form in this kind of trolling. The Media Bias/Fact Check website bills the site as "an extreme right biased conspiracy website".
All the more remarkable then to see Deutsche Bank's social media team deigning to issue a rebuttal, which served only to add a sheen of legitimacy to the Zero Hedge line: "Just like we witnessed with Lehman Brothers, there is always an effort to maintain the charade until the very last minute".
This led to a collective outpouring from the libertarian Twitter fringe typified by this post: In an outbreak of common sense, Deutsche Bank has since deleted the tweet.