Germany
all page content
all page content
Main body page content
LATEST ARTICLES
-
After years of retrenchment, Commerzbank’s head of corporate clients Michael Kotzbauer tells Euromoney of a tentative return to growth. The bank has dodged Germany’s commercial real estate slump but is having to adapt to a worsening geopolitical backdrop. Capital and cost efficiency remain big priorities.
-
In an interview with Euromoney, European Banking Authority chair José Manuel Campa joins the European Central Bank and others in pressuring banks to do more to prepare for geopolitical risks spreading from Russia to China, the US and Middle East.
-
The two European banks are both trying to de-emphasise their investment banks and want to build up areas where they see weakness. Barclays is later to this party than Deutsche, but both will have found encouragement in the first three months of 2024.
-
The German lender’s decision to put its chips on southeast Asia is paying off handsomely. Under the leadership of Asia CEO Alexander von zur Mühlen, Deutsche Bank has doubled its capital in Vietnam and Indonesia, with more to come, moved a host of global roles to the region, and has seen Asean eclipse its India and China business in terms of growth and absolute numbers.
-
In 2020, Deutsche Bank’s Asia chief, Alexander von zur Mühlen, placed more of his chips on fast-growing southeast Asia. As global firms diversify out of China, his prescience and willingness to deliver on his convictions is starting to pay off.
-
A private debt hangover in real estate is threatening middle-class retirement savings across Germany. Local banks, which focused more on senior loans, should be safer. But are these lenders ready to finance the recovery in commercial property that the German market so badly needs?
-
ING Bank’s commitment to sustainable and responsible banking in Germany makes the best bank for environmental, social and governance in the country this year.
-
Banks may be retreating from lending directly to small and medium-sized enterprises, but by lending to credit specialists with good technology they can still be a source of funding for the sector.
-
Just three weeks on from the rapturous response to Arm Holdings re-listing on Nasdaq, the prospects for a revival in IPOs suddenly look dim.
-
The German lender has named Claudio de Sanctis as its new head of private bank and created a single, unified division – part of longstanding plans to generate more income from the business by rooting out inefficiencies and tapping into new global income streams.
-
Big banks capable of competing with US players are part of Europe’s geostrategic interests, Deutsche Bank CEO tells audience at Euromoney dinner.
-
The activist shareholder highlights concerns about a former poster child for private equity ownership of banks.
-
Pouncing on a firm with lots of corporate broking relationships at the low point for IPOs is a smart trade.
-
The COO of Deutsche Bank’s International Private Bank, Sandra Wirfs, tells Euromoney how it has been able not just to slash costs but also to make its wealth management business more cost-efficient than the core bank.
-
After its DAX return, Commerzbank now has a clear – if uncertain – path to achieving its profit target, according to CFO Bettina Orlopp.
-
Four years ago, Christian Sewing set out to give the German bank new direction. His plan, based on income-rich services like private banking, continues to surprise and succeed. Euromoney caught up with the head of International Private Bank, Claudio de Sanctis, to discuss last year’s financials and his plans in Asia and the Middle East.
-
Private credit funds are committing more to specialist non-bank lenders such as iwoca, seeing big potential in small business credits, even if NPLs are set to climb.
-
The German bank’s strong third-quarter earnings are a partial result of forming a new international private bank division two years ago, honing it and continuing to invest in the strategy.
-
The biggest IPO in Europe for a decade has not generated the kind of excitement that might have been expected in calmer times. Porsche’s flotation was solid enough, but its structure and unusual nature make it a poor proxy for the broader equity capital markets business, which is on its knees.
-
A new job running Bayern Munich's finances could be more rewarding for HVB CEO Michael Diederich, especially after UniCredit CEO Andrea Orcel’s push for more cuts in Germany.
-
Fossil fuel assets were set to become obsolete in the transition to net zero. But the war in Ukraine is forcing European governments to secure alternative energy sources and driving demand for coal, oil and gas back in the wrong direction. With the global energy transition seemingly pitched against national energy security agendas, banks are trying to navigate a difficult path through the turmoil.
-
Smaller firms are expected to pull back on expenditure as recession risk rises.
-
One of the architects of Deutsche Bank’s corporate and investment bank leaves a complex legacy.
-
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.
-
Claudio de Sanctis says that the new unit he heads is the next step on Deutsche Bank’s journey to global scale in wealth management.
-
Firms such as Deposit Solutions and Raisin are thriving, partly because Europe’s wealthy are so risk averse.
-
The German constitutional court wants limits on ECB sovereign bond buying when the real question is whether it can do enough to stave off sovereign defaults.
-
The biggest challenge in German banking has suddenly gone from job cuts to handing out state-guaranteed loans as quickly as possible.
-
Just when SSA bankers were getting used to a market supportive of deals again, Germany has surprised them with a change of approach.
-
The German leader joins local private banks in starting to steer clients towards third-party deposits platforms as the sector tries to pass on negative rates.
-
Private equity buyers have never had so much cash to put to work; they are already looking to make new investments in companies that will survive the lockdowns.
-
Central banks have told lenders to eat into their buffers, but intense debate remains over recognition of non-performing loans in the push for debt moratoria.
-
The virtue of private capital is that it can withstand short-term volatility in valuations of assets held for the long term – and now is the time to prove that.
-
If the reversal rate is lower elsewhere, Italy and Germany can’t blame the ECB.
-
As the bank finally grapples with the restructuring it has needed for years, there are reasons to be optimistic.
-
The German bank’s transaction banking franchise will be central to the success of its new corporate banking division.
-
Finance minister Olaf Scholz has laid out Germany’s negotiating position for the completion of banking union, a pre-requisite for much-needed consolidation.
-
-
Clients have had a much easier time than their banks in Germany, but fintech innovation is creating ways for the likes of Commerzbank and Deutsche Bank to thrive, even in the country’s SME heartlands.
-
Deutsche Bank’s decision to exit equities but continue with ECM is a startling move, but it reflects the reality of the industry as much as it does the bank’s own uncomfortable position.
-
Deutsche Bank has taken the radical step of getting rid of its equities business, but thinks it can still offer ECM. Can it?
-
The Deutsche Bank CFO is adamant that not only are his bank’s new ambitions achievable despite a fragile environment, but clients are also supportive.
-
Germany is famous for its engineering and infamous for its banks – but how does a $4 trillion economy get by with only one battered global systemically important bank? And is the answer also the problem or an example to follow?
-
With a balance sheet of €486 billion, KfW is Germany’s third-largest bank and a key player in German finance. Does it provide a protective cloak to the country’s financial well-being or cast a shadow over its banking sector?
-
Once a global wealth management (WM) powerhouse, DBWM no longer sits in the top 10 when it comes to AuM or stature.
-
As it presses ahead with restructuring, Deutsche will exit cash equities, cut back in rates and centre itself on a traditional corporate banking business. CEO Christian Sewing calls it the most radical transformation the bank has undertaken in decades.
-
Deutsche employees who have recently been fired or face the axe will no doubt take comfort in the successes of fellow alumni such as Sajid Javid.
-
Christian Sewing has set the bank a difficult task of cutting businesses and costs yet growing revenues in the next three years; not everyone is convinced it can do both
-
Germany’s biggest bank wants to convince investors that its latest restructuring effort differs from previous attempts by returning the firm to its original mission.
-
The giant of European banking in the 1990s.
-
Greater consideration has to be given to financing conservation. That includes questioning the financing of firms that produce pesticides and herbicides.
-
While Commerzbank might yet be an attractive partner in European consolidation, Deutsche is caught in a horrible cycle of continuing to cut costs to offset declining revenues.
-
Germany may conduct a strange experiment in state-sponsored investment banking if a merger between Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank proceeds.
-
The news that Garth Ritchie, head of investment banking at Deutsche Bank, is being paid €250,000 a month for extra responsibility 'in connection with the implications of Brexit' has been condemned in Germany, where politicians and union leaders are preparing to oppose a potential merger with Commerzbank and associated job cuts.
-
However the situation plays out, it might be the smaller firm that ends up in the stronger position.
-
The bank confirms focus on transaction banking by strengthening ties with its investment banking unit through new appointments.
-
The rationale to accelerate cuts in its US investment bank is obvious, but an orderly withdrawal will be hard to execute.
-
Its strong performance in Euromoney’s trade finance survey – despite its recent difficulties – has left some rivals scratching their heads. What lies behind its high placing?
-
Berlin alone cannot change the costly quirks of Germany’s state-owned corporate banks.
-
New investigations into the troubled bank evoke bad memories.
-
Frequent issuers on both sides of the Atlantic are exploring new ways to concentrate their high-quality liabilities into fewer more-liquid bonds to avoid paying a premium as markets sell off.
-
The sacking of DWS’s chief executive barely six months after its IPO shows that asset management might not be the great hope for a firm like Deutsche Bank.
-
Commerzbank's online-only bank is a hefty beast, but growing faster than ever
-
Euromoney talks to ECB Single Supervisory Mechanism board member Ignazio Angeloni about the challenges the SSM faces, and how eurozone integration, and in some cases bank mergers, could help improve European banks’ competitiveness.
-
A crisis is forcing a spike in small bank mergers in Italy. It is a more tentative trend in Germany, although these banks’ common desire for independence might make such crises inevitable.
-
Venture funders establish a $500 million valuation for German fintech, betting that rapid growth in open banking is now inevitable and will transform the financial landscape.
-
French, let alone Italian, banks should not gloat. Germany’s banking problem is theirs too, and neither domestic mergers nor French-led acquisitions will solve it.
-
-
Berenberg wants to transform itself from a German firm to a European one with a UK mindset, before eventually taking on Wall Street. Partners Hans-Walter Peters and Hendrik Riehmer are convinced the old merchant banking model can be modernized, but can they avoid the pitfalls of rapid expansion?
-
US asset manager sets sights on Germany with new direct lending fund.
-
Deutsche Bank is showing it can cut leverage exposure in its corporate and investment bank without slashing revenues. It has a long way to go in its pursuit of acceptable returns, but the new management team is demonstrating an early determination to deliver.
-
It is 10 years since Rajeev Misra left his position as head of credit and commodities at Deutsche Bank in a move that came a couple of months ahead of the failure of Lehman Brothers and a global financial crisis.
-
Christian Sewing has been painted as the stern cost disciplinarian and man of action, so he had to unveil something decisive-sounding at his first results call — even if it smacks of tokenism
-
With an embarrassing and badly mishandled change of chief executive now complete, all the big problems still remain for Deutsche Bank.
-
Deutsche’s CEO is telling the world just how much the bank still needs to do to improve, but struggles to make investors see the cost of fixing things as investing for the future.
-
A bad year as the bank continued to rejig its client base, but management predicts GTB revenues will improve from the second quarter.
-
Progress is limited and slow, and chief executive John Cryan remains under pressure
-
Without fanfare, BNP Paribas is building its network among UK corporate clients. It’s following a template that’s already paying dividends in Germany. Is it on track to be Europe’s pre-eminent bank?
-
Deutsche says it welcomes any investor who sees potential in the German bank’s share, but holders are growing impatient for delivery.
-
LBBW’s new chief executive has put together an ambitious and far-reaching strategy for the state-owned German bank that will surprise many. Can his focus on corporates, international expansion, capital markets and fintech work when private-sector banks are failing?
-
Germany’s public-sector banks are not meant to be profitable – they have a social function – but even though stresses will continue, savings banks have found ways to work with the Landesbanks.
-
The need for European bank consolidation is clear. Southern European banks are numerous small and poorly valued. But the good news is that consolidation is getting under way in Italy and the Iberian peninsula – particularly Spain. Bank M&A could accelerate, if and when regulatory uncertainty clears.
-
Germany’s export machine will be hit by a rebalancing of China's economy, but the special relationship between the world’s second- and fourth-largest economies might provide a springboard for the development of more sustainable economic ties.
-
The flotation of Deutsche Telekom was fenced by a thicket of regulations and employed more lawyers than syndicate staff. So how did Deutsche Morgan Grenfell get away with breaking so many of its own rules? And did the three global coordinators – DMG, Dresdner Bank and Goldman Sachs – allow themselves to be manipulated by a greedy issuer? None of this bodes well for Telekom 2. Laura Covill reports
-
He is the man they said would always remain in the shadow of Alfred Herrhausen, but they were wrong. Hilmar Kopper, speaker of the managing board of Deutsche Bank, is on the way to becoming a giant in world banking in his own right – a name to rival Abs, Ulrich, Guth and Christians. In the first full interview he has given since becoming speaker, he speaks to Padraic Fallon.
-
The merger between Manufacturers Hanover and Chemical defied conventional wisdom.
-
When Bayer's $200 million financing hit the Eurobond market in the second week of January it met a guarded welcome. The scarcity value of German corporate paper combined with the weight of lead manager Deutsche Bank seemed to ensure a smooth path for the issue. But was this the time, given the reluctance of investors, to spring such a deal?