BERLIN, Oct. 30 (Xinhua) -- German stocks continued the week's horizontal trend and were almost unchanged at the start of trading on Wednesday, with the benchmark DAX index losing by 10.2 points, or 0.08 percent, opening at 12,929.42 points.
The biggest winner among Germany's largest 30 companies at the start of trading was car maker Volkswagen, increasing 1.94 percent, followed by Germany's largest airline Lufthansa with 0.93 percent and consumer goods company Henkel with 0.51 percent.
Volkswagen published its business results for the first quarter on Wednesday. Turnover of the German car maker amounted to 186.6 billion euros (207.5 billion U.S. dollars) in the first nine months of 2019, marking an increase of 6.9 percent compared to the same period last year.
Shortly after trading started, shares of Bayer increased by nearly two percent and were among the winners in the German stock index DAX on Wednesday.
German agrochemical giant Bayer is facing an increased number of lawsuits in the United States for its weed killer Glyphosate, according to Bayer's report for the third quarter published on Wednesday. The number of lawsuits in this regard had more than doubled since July to a total of 42,700.
Since Bayer bought U.S. rival Monsanto in the biggest takeover in German corporate history in 2018, shares of Bayer had lost around 50 percent but recovered some of their losses after hitting a five-year low in June.
On Wednesday, Deutsche Bank reported net losses of 832 million euros (925 million U.S. dollars) in the third quarter of 2019 as a result of "restructuring efforts." "Transformation is fully underway with tangible progress on costs and de-risking," said Christian Sewing, chief executive officer (CEO) of Deutsche Bank.
Shortly after trading commenced, shares of Germany's largest bank Deutsche Bank declined by over 5 percent.
The euro increased by 0.07 percent on Wednesday morning local time, trading at 1.1122 U.S. dollars.
The German Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) is scheduled to announce the inflation rate for Germany for October on Wednesday. In September, the inflation rate in Germany stood at 1.2 percent.
