There's life in the old dog yet

 There is a great deal of irony when, of all things, the division of a company that was once cut back now helps the entire group to make a profit again after years of deep red figures. Nothing else has happened to Germany's banking leader. The unloved investment banking unit generated high profits from trading in bonds and currencies, so that in the Corona year of 2020, of all places, the Dax group posted its first billion-dollar profit since 2014. A year earlier, the financial institution had still posted a net loss of 5.7 billion euros due to the costs of the far-reaching group restructuring.

Apart from the top management around CEO Christian Sewing, who once wanted to make the Frankfurt-based bank less dependent on precisely this investment banking, the company's employees and shareholders will also be pleased with the development.

Sewing wrote to employees in a letter that while there is a lot of talk at the moment about the successes and growth of the investment banking division (with a pre-tax profit of 3.2 billion euros), "this fails to recognize what our retail bank and our corporate bank have achieved. In a difficult environment with historically low interest rates, our teams in both divisions have managed to keep earnings stable and meet their internal targets. That's strong."

If you compare the figures from Frankfurt with the latest balance sheets and news from other European financial institutions, the Deutsche Bank CEO is right. Deutsche Bank fought well in the pandemic year and was rewarded. The spin-off of the fund subsidiary DWS Group or the move away from the derivatives business have not had a negative impact on the bank's overall business. On the contrary, according to Sewing, "Deutsche" is "sustainably profitable and confident that the overall positive trend will continue in 2021, even in these difficult times."