Anshu Jain cranks up the flow at Deutsche Bank

Clive Horwood

May 06, 2009

Foreign exchange, money markets and rates have returned Deutsche Bank to profitability. Anshu Jain, the firm’s global head of markets, says it’s all down to applying smart solutions to relatively simple products. But don’t be fooled into thinking he’s given up on more complex business. Clive Horwood reports.

DEUTSCHE BANK WAS meant to be one of the biggest victims of the credit crunch. Many competitors predicted a spectacular fall from grace for a firm that had grown quickly from humble beginnings to occupy a top seat at the bulge-bracket table, and had rarely shown much humility in doing so.

Deutsche was driven by a derivatives-savvy culture that made them clear leaders in the business of transforming securities, most notably in credit. They weren’t, in their own opinion, just the smartest guys in the room, they were the smartest group of people in the industry.

So when the crunch hit and many of the transformed securities turned out to be blow-ups in disguise, Deutsche suffered. The group posted a full year loss of €3.9 billion. The corporate banking and securities division (CB&S), the traditional driver of Deutsche’s profitability, suffered negative revenues of €3.8 billion in the fourth quarter alone.

Anshu Jain, global head of markets and joint head of the global investment bank at Deutsche, admits that the bank has "suffered".

And yet its suffering has been minimal compared to many of its biggest competitors.