Deutsche Bank AG history, profile and history video
Deutsche Bank AG provides corporate banking and investment services. It operates through the following divisions: Corporate Banking and Securities (CB&S), Global Transaction Banking (GTB), Asset and Wealth Management (AWM), Private and Business Clients (PBC), and Non-Core Operations Unit (NCOU). The CB&S division engages in the selling, trading and structuring of financial market products and is responsible for mergers and acquisitions, including advisory debt and equity issuance. The GTB division provides domestic and cross-border payments, risk mitigation, international trade finance, trust, agency, depositary, custody, and related services. The AWM division offers traditional, alternative investment products, and tailored wealth management products and services to ultra high net worth individuals and families. The PBC division provides banking services, such as current accounts, deposits, loans, investment management, and pension products to private individuals, self-employed clients, and small and medium-sized businesses. The NCOU division bundles assets and liabilities with a view to accelerating the de-risking process. The company was founded by Adelbert Delbrueck on January 22, 1870 and is headquartered in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.“
“Deutsche Bank History
1870–1919
Deutsche Bank was founded in Berlin in 1870 as a specialist bank for foreign trade. The bank’s statute was adopted on 22 January 1870, and on 10 March 1870 the Prussian government granted it a banking license. The statute laid great stress on foreign business:
The object of the company is to transact banking business of all kinds, in particular to promote and facilitate trade relations between Germany, other European countries and overseas markets.
Two of the founders were Georg Siemens whose father’s cousin had founded Siemens and Halske, and L. Bamberger. Previous to the founding of Deutsche Bank, German importers and exporters were dependent upon English and French banking institutions in the world markets—a serious handicap in that German bills were almost unknown in international commerce, generally disliked and subject to a higher rate of discount than English or French bills.
The bank’s first domestic branches, inaugurated in 1871 and 1872, were opened in Bremen and Hamburg. Its first foray overseas came shortly afterwards, in Shanghai (1872) and London (1873) followed sometime by South America (1874-1886).The branch opening in London, after one failure and another partially successful attempt, was a prime necessity for the establishment of credit for the German trade in what was then the world’s money center.
Major projects in the early years of the bank included the Northern Pacific Railroad in the US and the Baghdad Railway (1888). In Germany, the bank was instrumental in the financing of bond offerings of steel company Krupp (1879) and introduced the chemical company Bayer to the Berlin stock market.
The second half of the 1890s saw the beginning of a new period of expansion at Deutsche Bank. The bank formed alliances with large regional banks, giving itself an entrée into Germany’s main industrial regions. Joint ventures were symptomatic of the concentration then under way in the German banking industry. For Deutsche Bank, domestic branches of its own were still something of a rarity at the time; the Frankfurt branch dated from 1886 and the Munich branch from 1892, while further branches were established in Dresden and Leipzig in 1901.
In addition, the bank rapidly perceived the value of specialist institutions for the promotion of foreign business. Gentle pressure from the Foreign Ministry played a part in the establishment of Deutsche Ueberseeische Bank in 1886 and the stake taken in the newly established Deutsch-Asiatische Bank three years later, but the success of those companies in showed that their existence made sound commercial sense.
1919–1933
The immediate postwar period was a time of liquidations. Having already lost most of its foreign assets, Deutsche Bank was obliged to sell other holdings. A great deal of energy went into shoring up what had been achieved. But there was new business, too, some of which was to have an impact for a long time to come. The bank played a significant role in the establishment of the film production company, UFA, and the merger of Daimler and Benz.
The bank merged with other local banks in 1929 to create Deutsche Bank und DiscontoGesellschaft, at that point the biggest ever merger in German banking history. Increasing costs were one reason for the merger. Another was the trend towards concentration throughout the industry in the 1920s. The merger came at just the right time to help counteract the emerging world economic and banking crisis. In 1937, the company name changed back to Deutsche Bank.
The crisis was, in terms of its political impact, the most disastrous economic event of the century. The shortage of liquidity that paralyzed the banks was fuelled by a combination of short-term foreign debt and borrowers no longer able to pay their debts, while the inflexibility of the state exacerbated the situation. For German banks, the crisis in the industry was a watershed. A return to circumstances that might in some ways have been considered reminiscent of the “golden age” before World War I was ruled out for many years.
1933–1945
After Adolf Hitler came to power, instituting the Third Reich, Deutsche Bank dismissed its three Jewish board members in 1933. In subsequent years, Deutsche Bank took part in the aryanization of Jewish-owned businesses; according to its own historians, the bank was involved in 363 such confiscations by November 1938. During the war, Deutsche Bank incorporated other banks that fell into German hands during the occupation of Eastern Europe. Deutsche provided banking facilities for the Gestapo and loaned the funds used to build the Auschwitz camp and the nearby IG Farben facilities. Deutsche Bank revealed its involvement in Auschwitz in February 1999. In December 1999 Deutsche, along with other major German companies, contributed to a US$5.2 billion compensation fund following lawsuits brought by Holocaust survivors. The history of Deutsche Bank during the Second World War has been documented by independent historians commissioned by the Bank.
During World War II, Deutsche Bank became responsible for managing the Bohemian Union Bank in Prague, with branches in the Protectorate and in Slovakia, the Bankverein inYugoslavia (which has now been divided into two financial corporations, one in Serbia and one in Croatia), the Albert de Barry Bank in Amsterdam, the National Bank of Greece inAthens, the Creditanstalt-Bankverein in Austria and Hungary, the Deutsch-Bulgarische Kreditbank in Bulgaria, and Banca Comercială Română (The Romanian Commercial Bank)in Bucharest. It also maintained a branch in Istanbul, Turkey.
Post-WWII
Following Germany’s defeat in World War II, the Allied authorities, in 1948, ordered Deutsche Bank’s break-up into ten regional banks. These 10 regional banks were later consolidated into three major banks in 1952: Norddeutsche Bank AG; Süddeutsche Bank AG; and Rheinisch-Westfälische Bank AG. In 1957, these three banks merged to form Deutsche Bank AG with its headquarters in Frankfurt.
In 1959, the bank entered retail banking by introducing small personal loans. In the 1970s, the bank pushed ahead with international expansion, opening new offices in new locations, such as Milan (1977), Moscow, London, Paris and Tokyo. In the 1980s, this continued when the bank paid US$603 million in 1986 to acquire the Banca d’America e d’Italia, the Italian subsidiary that Bank of America had established in 1922 when it acquired Banca dell’Italia Meridionale. The acquisition represented the first time Deutsche Bank had acquired a sizeable branch network in another European country.
In 1989, the first steps towards creating a significant investment-banking presence were taken with the acquisition of Morgan, Grenfell & Co., a UK-based investment bank. By the mid-1990s, the buildup of a capital-markets operation had got under way with the arrival of a number of high-profile figures from major competitors. Ten years after the acquisition of Morgan Grenfell, the U.S. firm Bankers Trust was added.
Deutsche continued to build up its presence in Italy with the acquisition in 1993 of Banca Popolare di Lecco from Banca Popolare di Novara for about US$476 million.
Since 2000
In October 2001, Deutsche Bank was listed on the New York Stock Exchange. This was the first NYSE listing after interruption due to 11 September attacks. The following year, Deutsche Bank strengthened its U.S. presence when it purchased Scudder Investments. Meanwhile, in Europe, Deutsche Bank increased its private-banking business by acquiring Rued Blass & Cie (2002) and the Russian investment bank United Financial Group (2006). In Germany, further acquisitions of Norisbank, Berliner Bank and Deutsche Postbankstrengthened Deutsche Bank’s retail offering in its home market. This series of acquisitions was closely aligned with the bank’s strategy of bolt-on acquisitions in preference to so-called “transformational” mergers. These formed part of an overall growth strategy that also targeted a sustainable 25% return on equity, something the bank achieved in 2005.
The company’s headquarters, the Deutsche Bank Twin Towers building, was extensively renovated beginning in 2007. The renovation took approximately three years to complete. The renovated building was certified LEED Platinum and DGNB Gold.
The bank developed, owned and operated the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, after the project’s original developer defaulted on its borrowings. Deutsche Bank opened the casino in 2010 and ran it at a loss until its sale in May 2014. The bank’s exposure at the time of sale was more than $4 billion, however it sold the property to Blackstone Group for $1.73 billion.”
*Information from Forbes.com and Wikipedia.org
**Video published on YouTube by “DEUTSCHEBANKGROUP“