As an investment bank, Deutsche Bank relies on performance in that area of operation. Following challenge in investment banking unit, Deutsche Bank suffered its first annual loss since 2008, followed by drastic drop of its shares.
Ironically, investment banking which has been the core strength of Deutsche Bank become its achilles heel in the 2015 annual loss. According to Bloomberg, the German lender said that "challenging market conditions," principally at its investment banking and trading unit, cut the fourth-quarter revenue 16% to about 6.6 billion euros ($7.1 billion) from a year earlier.
Following last week's announcement of its 2015 annual losses, the bank's share price shed 10% on that day alone. According to Deutche Welle, there are five problems tormenting the Germany's biggest bank. They are the direction, transaction, capital reserves, competitiveness and massive restructuring.
In term of direction, a director of the Institute of Banking and Banking Law, Hartmann-Wendels said, "The bank appears exclusively on the defensive. Its focus areas for the future have not been clearly communicated."
While banking expert at the University of Cologne, Thomas Hartmann-Wendels said more plainly,"Deutsche Bank has a strategy problem." He also said the problem in capital reserves and threatens the Frankfurt-based bank, as its share price continues to plunge, "Raising capital on the market is expensive and waters down the share price for existing share holders."
Wendels also said that massive restructuring in Deutsche Bank will take a long time before it goes back to normal. However, the bank needs to keep a modest performance to help it return to its powerful performance as it was before.
In the massive restructuring began October, Deutsche Bank shut down operation in 10 countries and conducted a massive layoffs of its staff. The bank is expect 2018 to be the first "clean" year for its operation.
Chief financial officer Marcus Schenck told CNBC, "We are coming back from a humongous loss position, if we turn this around over the next two years – and we said that 2018 will be the first "clean" year, if we really make that work and achieve our targets, then I think this is a very attractive place to be."
Furthermore, Schenck said, "I knew this wasn't going to be a walk in the park, but rather a multi-year journey where we need to turn around things.We have so many people in the bank that have been here for decades and there is a lot of vested interest to still make it work."
Following report of its annual loss, Deutsche Bank shares continue to drop. On Thursday trading, the shares plunge to around 3.7%, adding to total loss of 24% this year.
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