Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg
How Deutsche Bank Made a $462 Million Loss Disappear
A dubious trade leads to a criminal trial for Europe’s most important bank.
(See April 12, 2018 update at bottom of story).
On Dec. 1, 2008, most of the world’s banks were still panicking through the financial crisis. Lehman Brothers had collapsed. Merrill Lynch had been sold. Citigroup and others had required multibillion-dollar bailouts to survive. But not every institution appeared to be in free fall. That afternoon, at the London outpost of Deutsche Bank, the stolid-seeming, €2 trillion German powerhouse, a group of financiers met to consider a proposal from a team led by a trim, 40-year-old banker named Michele Faissola.