LONDON: New Year, same old Deutsche Bank. Germany's largest lender by assets on Friday announced that it would make a small loss after tax for 2017 after US President Trump's corporate tax cut knocked the balance sheet value of past losses. The ongoing decline in trading revenue, however, highlights the weakness of Deutsche's business mix.
The 1.5 billion euro non-cash writedown of Deutsche's deferred tax assets is less painful than the fines and restructuring charges that dragged it into the red in the previous two years. Moreover, CEO John Cryan is in good company: rivals including Barclays, Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs have announced similar hits.
More worrying is the 22 percent decline in sales and trading revenue that Deutsche suffered in the fourth quarter. The 32 billion euro group is not doing appreciably worse than European peers. In the three months to September, revenue from fixed income, equities and commodities sales and trading was down 23 percent year-on-year. That was a smaller drop than comparable businesses at Barclays, albeit greater than at Credit Suisse.
The reason that Deutsche is the disproportionate target of shareholder anxiety - its shares are down more than 6 percent in the past two days - is that it is more dependent on this revenue than other big investment banks. Equities and fixed income sales and trading brought in more than 31 percent of Deutsche's total revenue in the third quarter of 2017, compared with around 28 percent at Credit Suisse and 19 percent at Barclays. The German group also lacks a consistent source of stable earnings similar to Credit Suisse's wealth management franchise or Barclays's UK retail bank.
What's more, Deutsche's aspirations to be a global investment banking behemoth appear increasingly far-fetched: its overall investment banking revenue has lagged behind bigger US rivals such as JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and Bank of America in each of the last three quarters, according to analysts at Berenberg.
Investor patience with Cryan may be wearing thin. But without a pickup in volatility or client activity, trading revenues - and shareholders - remain stuck in a rut.
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