Germany's biggest lender Deutsche Bank launched asset management arm DWS onto the Frankfurt stock market Friday, with shares in the subsidiary climbing higher than the asking price in early trading. After the opening bell rang, the stock reached 32.55 euros ($40.17) in the first minutes, slightly higher than the 32.50 target price.
The result is encouraging for the bank, which had set the price below the middle of its mooted range of between 30 and 36 euros. It aimed to raise 1.4 billion euros rather than the 1.8 billion a sale at 36 euros could have brought in. Deutsche's starting price for the 44.5 million shares offered to investors - amounting to 22.25 percent of DWS - valued the entire company at some 6.5 billion euros.
An insider had told AFP Thursday that the initial public offering (IPO) was "oversubscribed by 2.5 times". DWS is widely regarded one of struggling Deutsche Bank's crown jewels. With around 700 billion euros of assets under management, it has booked profits over the past three years - leaping 40 percent last year to 633 million euros - while the parent company remains in the red.
But it is far smaller than giants of the sector like US-based Blackrock, which boasts some 5.1 trillion euros in its portfolio. Floating DWS is a milestone for Deutsche Bank chief executive John Cryan. Since his installation in 2015, the British CEO has been battling to turn around Deutsche, aiming to return it to profitability while restructuring the business and clearing up thousands of legal entanglements, many of them dating back to the financial crisis.
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