What’s happening at Fifth Third?

Fifth Third, the Cincinnati-based regional lender, has been tanking of late. Today, it was down another 4% to close at a 12-year low.

“Shares of Fifth Third Bancorp touched a 12-year low Thursday as capital concerns continued to swirl around the banking sector.

The stock fell 65 cents, or 4.2 percent, to close at $14.69, after trading as low as $14.48 during the session. The last time the Cincinnati-based bank’s shares were near that level was February 1996.

In the past 52 weeks, shares were trading as high as $43.20.”
-AP via Forbes, 12 Jun 2008

The price action in this stock makes me very nervous. There is no news on the stock yet it has been sinking day after day. Today it was down despite financials being up. What gives with Fifth Third?

The Google Finance 5-day chart is below.

See also: Other posts under the label ‘regional banks.’

Updates:
As of 10:45 AM EDT on Friday, June 13th, FITB was down another 12% to below $13 a share after it was downgraded by BMO Capital Markets. BMO’s Peter Winter expects Fifth Third to follow KeyCorp and cut its dividend by 50%.

On 18 Jun 2008, I wrote a new blog entry reflecting the news of FITB’s dividend cut and capital raising campaign.