European markets plunged today over worries about the spreading subprime mortgage crisis. Analysts downgraded UBS and Deutsche Bank, which dropped, and all 14 open Western European exchanges lost ground, echoing the Asian markets' earlier retreat. "There's a lot of uncertainty about what's going on and who has lost money from the credit-market debacle," says a Swiss strategist.
US index futures also fell with the worry over the subprime fallout. UBS hit the skids after Credit Suisse downgraded it from "outperform" to "neutral" just before close of business yesterday, and Merrill Lynch's changing its recommendation on Deutsche Bank from "buy" to "neutral" likewise drove down shares of the largest German bank. (More subprime mortgages stories.)