While Germany fires up its coal-burning power stations once more, it’s almost as if the country itself is protesting.

If Russia stops the gas this winter, the damage to European banks will be worse than Covid, and Germany will be at the centre of the storm.

The last big Wall Street broker-dealer has had a spectacular run in the last 20 years. It now wants to build ‘the best world-class global investment bank’.

The next decade will be one of exceptional value creation in the birthplace of private banking. European entrepreneurs are handing the reins of mid-sized Mittelstand firms to the next generation, while others sell out to global investors and venture capital firms.

A city packed with private banks is quietly serving the needs of a large and wealthy part of northern Germany, yet it remains generally unnoticed as a wealth management powerhouse.

Now back at single-A with both leading rating agencies, Deutsche hopes to win more business and improve margins as investors await their share of the returns.

A second large AT1 deal this year shows increased investor confidence around the bank’s transformation, but timing the deal was tricky.

Alexander Wynaendts has worked in insurance for a quarter of a century, but is not a stranger to investment banking.

Deutsche Bank’s restructuring has not been thrown off course by the pandemic, but upside surprises can hide risks. Discipline will be needed to avoid the temptations of the past.

This time last year, Euromoney recognized progress at Deutsche Bank as the best transformation story of 2020. Twelve months on, the German lender might be getting its act together at last. Can it sustain its recovery?

Two years ago, Deutsche pulled back in ECM. Now, in Asia, it wants back in.

More fintechs are selling out to big incumbent banks, but the German pair would rather merge to achieve their vision of savings as a service.

While doubling of profit at the investment bank stood out, it was not the bank’s only strong performer.

In executing what may be the biggest European corporate Sofr-linked swap yet, BMW has shown what well-prepared company treasuries and their advisory banks can achieve as the sun sets on Libor.

The ECB is desperate for banking consolidation. Cross-border deals remain unlikely, but wholesale combinations may be coming.

The transformation plan appears to be working and as the investment bank regains market share, Deutsche looks better set for the coming consolidation.

Incoming UniCredit chairman Pier Carlo Padoan could be a useful ally to CEO Jean Pierre Mustier, but the latter may not realise his dreams in Germany and Europe unless the bank plays a greater role in Italy, too.

No golf please, I’m delivering: how the German bank’s new CEO sees himself.

Manfred Knof starts early next year, after Martin Zielke is ousted by Cerberus. He joins recently arrived chairman Hans-Jörg Vetter.

Its reincarnation as a sensible corporate bank is still a work in progress, but Deutsche’s achievements so far deserve recognition.

The lifeline that Berlin promised Germany’s businesses earlier this year was so large it made other corporate rescues in Europe look tame. In its determination to protect companies and jobs Berlin is stirring new debate, at home and abroad, about its growing role as an industrial decision maker and even shareholder. Can the country use its financial muscle to relaunch its own sputtering economic model?

The EU’s new recovery fund is a historic step to help the countries worst affected by Covid avoid a debt trap. If the EU’s short-term bills become a risk-free, interest-rate instrument, this temporary response to the deadly virus could become a permanent change to Europe’s capital markets

UniCredit CEO Jean Pierre Mustier is among bankers pushing for easier corporate access to government equity, as state-backed loans have heightened firms’ indebtedness, and firms’ sales struggle to recover.

State-guaranteed lending to help hard-hit firms in Germany has lagged its equivalents in France, Spain, Italy and the UK. State development bank KfW says that’s a good thing.

With approval from Brussels, Germany can roll out Mittelstand recapitalizations through a new €600 billion Wirtschaftsstabilisierungsfonds, or WSF – just in time for the country’s troubled but economically vital automotive sector.

Attorney Mel Georgie Racela runs the Anti-Money Laundering Council Secretariat in the Philippines, one of two agencies tasked with getting to the bottom with the country’s involvement in the Wirecard scandal. He talks to Chris Wright.

The country’s response to the scandal is a chance to show good governance.

Everyone wanted radical change at Commerzbank, except the bank itself.

Nationalist desperation to get ahead in fintech surely explains some of the spectacular regulatory failure in the Wirecard accounting scandal.

A complex investment in Wirecard by Deutsche Bank veterans now working at SoftBank has effectively compounded the eventual embarrassment for Germany Inc from the failure of the online payments firm.