Germany’s big four private-sector banks have enormous assets but dismal profitability, return on equity and market share and weak cost control. Put well into the shade in retail business by the local savings banks and state banks, which have peculiar funding advantages, they are ill-equipped to meet the challenge of the coming European financial market without frontiers. They are scrabbling around for survival strategies but few of them impress. Jennifer Morris reports on a banking system on its knees
February 01, 2002