Preference shares typically carry no voting rights, which (unlike WestLB traders) was what Porsche was after.
The Land of North-Rhine Westphalia recently resolved to sell its 17.5% stake in WestLB.
WestLB officials say the two men, Friedhelm Breuers and Markus Bolder, broke trading limits.
Both the BNP and WestLB deals are expected to close at the end of the second quarter.
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Fortunately WestLB is too small a bank for its impropriety to have had an effect on financial markets.
WestLB's traders had been using partners outside the bank with whom they made fake deals on preference shares.
It weakens his position with the regional politicians and savings-bank chiefs who control WestLB via its supervisory board.
"With this situation the political ground is now prepared for WestLB to be bought by somebody else, " said Becker.
"NTT DoCoMo is more or less taking the company (AOL Japan) over, " internet analyst Ortwin Gierhake of WestLB Securities said.
This makes it particularly galling for WestLB to be mired in a trading scandal that prevents it from playing an active role.
Last week WestLB confirmed it had suspended two of its compliance staff.
"The only place the music industry competes is in signing and promoting acts, " said Paul Richards, a music industry analyst with WestLB Panmure in London.
To his detriment it's all been acutely embarrassing for Fischer, the departing chairman, who was hired in 2004 to try and wipe out WestLB's reputation for unscrupulousness.
What is more "it's good news for Sky, because it makes the DTT (digital terrestrial) marketplace more coherent compared with ITV Digital", said WestLB analyst Simon Wallis.
Paul Lavin of WestLB Mellon Asset Management has found a close correlation between the performance of hedge funds investing in shares and the breadth of the stockmarket.
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BMW's ordinary shares, and big long positions in their preference shares, will hinge on whether they were kept in the trading book or the so-called banking book, where WestLB makes strategic investments.
There was also an incident last April, when WestLB admitted it had inadvertently amassed 14% of DaimlerChrysler (nyse: DCX - news - people ) to become the German carmaker's biggest shareholder.
The latest speculation to circulate through the European market is that German state bank WestLB, which is already facing difficulties in the wake of a trading scandal, is also in serious trouble because of its exposure to America's subprime mortgage market.
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