Police are investigating an envelope containing what appeared to be explosives that had been sent to Deutsche Bank chief executive Josef Ackermann on Wednesday.
Frankfurt police confirmed that a suspicious package addressed to Mr Ackermann was sent to the bank’s headquarters in the city but it was intercepted before it got to him. The police said it was unclear who had sent the package.
“What we had here was a powder, which indicates that we’re not dealing with commercial or military explosives,” a spokesman for Frankfurt police said. “It could be something homemade, for instance, made out of fireworks.”
The letter incident occurred at a time when anti-capitalist protesters across the world were demonstrating against what they see as the excesses of bankers and financiers.
Security had been stepped up at Deutsche Bank offices worldwide, banking sources said.
The police spokesman said the powder in the envelope raised the suspicion that it could detonate but that the substance had to be examined to determine what it was. The police also declined to say whether there was a detonator in the envelope that could have ignited the powder.
The interception occurred a day before European leaders were due to hold a summit in Brussels to find a way out of the sovereign debt crisis that started in Greece two years ago.