Deutsche Bank Hasn’t Changed Its Spots
Profit from the risky and volatile investment bank still dwarfs the bank’s three other main activities.
Out with the old and in with … the old.
Photo: Bloomberg
Christian Sewing deserves a round of applause. Deutsche Bank AG’s chief executive officer has succeeded where a number of his predecessors failed, by restoring the lender’s profitability. The secret sauce? Well, there isn’t one really. The new Deutsche Bank looks very much like the old one.
On Wednesday the company reported 1.6 billion euros ($1.9 billion) in pretax profit for the first three months of 2021, its best quarterly result since 2014. Revenue surged 14% to the highest since 2017, despite Germany’s biggest bank having retreated from entire lines of business such as equity trading.