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Shares in Deutsche Bank have fallen sharply on reports it will raise 9bn euros (£7.4bn, $11.4bn) in new equity.

The move is being seen as the first shot in a string of fund-raisings by banks around the world.

Germany's biggest bank saw its shares open down 5.5%, with shares in other banks across Europe also falling, including Barclays and Commerzbank.

On Sunday, global banking regulators meet in Switzerland to approve new capital and liquidity rules.

The Financial Times said that Deutsche would announce the fund-raising on Monday or Tuesday, in what would be the largest rights issue by a European bank this year.

First mover

A share sale of 9bn euros is almost a third of Deutsche's current market value of 30bn euros.

According to a research note from Frankfurt-based Close Brothers Seydler: "This [fund-raising] reinforces worries about the health of European financial institutes."

New rules agreed by the Basel international committee of banking supervisors are expected to raise the minimum capital ratio - a bank's buffer for absorbing future losses - to between 7% and 9%.

However, Deutsche Bank is under no immediate pressure from regulators to raise capital.

According to the results of stress tests carried out by European regulators in July, Deutsche Bank already has a capital ratio of 12.6%.

Even under the regulators' worst case scenario, the German lender would still enjoy a comfortable 9.7% margin.

Reports say Deutsche is instead planning to use at least some of the new funds to increase its stake in Postbank, the German post office bank.

If, as expected, the new loss provision rules are approved by the Basel committee on Sunday, banks will still have several years to meet the higher capital ratios.

However, big banks may move fast to shore up their balance sheets in order to reassure the financial markets. Deutsche appears to be moving quickly to get ahead of the crowd.

According to the German Banking Association, the top 10 German banks may need to raise a total of 105bn euros.

Stressful times

Market worries about the financial health of European banks and of certain European governments have heightened again over the past week.

The difference in yield between government bonds from the Irish Republic and Portugal versus Germany - a measure of how much more risky the markets perceive those countries to be - hit record highs on Tuesday, before falling back slightly.

Greek government bond yields remain at levels that imply markets think that Athens will probably default on its debts in the next three years.

Meanwhile doubts are persisting about the reliability of the stress tests to European banks carried out by regulators in July.

The tests were intended to discover how much losses the biggest banks would suffer if economic and financial conditions deteriorate again, so that regulators could tell the banks how much more capital they needed to raise.

However, the tests have been criticised for failing to consider the possibility of a formal default by a European government such as Greece, the Irish Republic or Portugal.

A failure by one of these governments to pay its debts would trigger much bigger losses in the banks' accounts than those used in the stress tests.