I recently saw The Dark Knight Rises and I don't remember the goal of the stock exchange robbery.

I remember that:

  • Selina Kyle steals Bruce Wayne's fingerprints and gives them indirectly to Bane.
  • Bane use them to rob the stock exchange.
  • There are some announcements that economy (and the city) would be perturbated due to the economic losses.
  • But that's nothing compared to the attack by Bane and the bomb threat.

So I don't understand how do this serves the plot of the movie.

Did Bane want to steal the money? It doesn't look like he needs it since his project is funded by Bruce Wayne's economic rival.

The usage of the fingerprints suggests that it targeted Bruce Wayne directly, but I find it extraneous.


Now first of all, as you correctly say in your answer and question, at that point Bane was supposedly working for John Daggett, who likely brought him into the country and funded his endeavours. So part of the reason for robbing the stock exchange was to bankcrupt Daggett's rival Bruce Wayne and make his company digestible by Daggett's own company. So it was part of Bane's job for Daggett and part of the reason why Daggett even funded him in the first place.

But even beyond that, you also have a additional motivations for Bane, or rather Talia al Ghul's League of Shadows, to bankcrupt Bruce Wayne:

  • First and foremost it supports their exterior plan of supposedly ridding the city of the rich decadence that plagues it, best represented by billionbaire playboy Bruce Wayne as a symbol of exactly what's wrong with the city and its corrupt upper class and their financial games.

  • And above all that, it also supports their more secret plan of blowing up the city. If you remember, Miranda Tate founded the fusion reactor project together with Bruce and her more diplomatic attempts to get him to involve her on the results all failed, so Bruce Wayne's bancruptcy is finally a reason to let her in on the project and get her hands on the bomb she needs to destroy the city, since the danger of John Dagget getting it is much higher than the one of involving an associate that has already built a personal relationship to Bruce and enjoys his trust.

So Daggett's primarily economical motivation plays nicely into Bane's (or Miranda's) own goals and they can basically hit two birds with a single stone, doing a well-paid job for John Daggett while advancing their plan of humiliating Bruce Wayne and destroying his city.

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It is explained (quickly) in the movie, the goal was to bankrupt Bruce Wayne so that Wayne Entreprises may be destabilized then absorbed by the guy who want to absorb Wayne Entreprises (Daggett, who employed Bane and paid for the underground work).

Remember, the point was to leave Bruce Wayne destitute so he'd have to turn to a financial white knight -- who would turn out to not be such a white knight -- to keep Wayne Enterprises and its fusion reactor out of the hands of Bane's corporate benefactor.

Source: Bane's Plan to Bankrupt Batman Doesn't Make Any Sense.

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