Deutsche Bank is one of the largest international banks by total assets. The bank was operating mainly through commercial banking division throughout most of the 20th century. Then in the late nineties, Edson Mitchell joined the bank as the head of global markets and helped to restructure it into one of the leading investment banks. The banks risky business plan worked nicely at the beginning. However, after the financial crisis came in 2008, Deutsche Bank became one of the most problematical international financial institutions.
The Bank had and still has problems on multiple levels. It was unprofitable, its liquidity ratios were (and still are) comparable to liquidity ratios of banks, that did not survive the financial crisis, the share of derivatives on its balance sheet is high and leads to severe losses. The Bank also has many legal problems, as it was involved in some of the world largest financial scandals. It was one of the leading players in the LIBOR scandal, Russian money-laundering scandal, Danske bank scandal and last but not least, also paid a large fine for selling toxic mortgage securities. Because of all this, the bank’s American subsidiary did not pass the Federal Reserve’s stress test three times. Furthermore, the banks share price decreased by 94%, from its peak of 112 EUR to its low of 7 EUR.
Because of all these problems, there is a high possibility that the bank will collapse in the future. That would hurt the European or even the world’s financial system. Therefore, it is important to prevent the collapse of the bank in every possible way (even by recapitalization from Germany), because the consequences of failure would be too severe.
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