DEUTSCHE BANK´S BEST SHOT MAY NOT BE ENOUGH / THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Deutsche Bank’s Best Shot May Not Be Enough

The German lender is right to focus on serving corporate clients, but its new restructuring plan leaves little room for error

By Stephen Wilmot

In theory, Deutsche Bank ’s DB -5.85%▲ strategic reset is as sensible as it is overdue. In practice, it will require flawless execution and may not go far enough.

Germany’s top lender laid out a radical restructuring plan on Sunday. It will shutter key elements of the global investment-banking operation, notably equities trading, and shift about a fifth of its assets into a new “bad bank” to be wound down. The basic idea is to shrink back to its historic core: serving the treasury needs of big companies and German savers.

This addresses one of the reasons for Deutsche Bank’s woefully low profitability: the losses it makes in global investment banking operations that cannot compete with those of far larger U.S. rivals. Equities trading is a scale and technology game increasingly dominated by J.P. Morgan , Morgan Stanleyand Goldman Sachs .

It doesn’t address another reason: Retail banking in Germany has never made much money. Hundreds of savings banks and state-backed lenders compete against commercial banks like Deutsche for customers. And the emphasis is on saving rather than borrowing, leaving banks with excess deposits to invest at the European Central Bank’s negative interest rates.

The problem is illustrated by Deutsche Bank’s local rival and failed merger partner Commerzbank. Commerzbankhas already walked the stony restructuring path Deutsche is now contemplating, yet its shares still only fetch 0.29 times book value, compared with 0.24 times for Deutsche. Being a focused German lender just isn’t an attractive prospect for investors.

However, there isn’t much Deutsche can do about this. It needs the deposit base provided by its German retail bank to fund a more lucrative business serving corporate clients.

The new targets announced Sunday leave very little room for error. Estimated restructuring charges of €7.4 billion by the end of 2022 will cut its core tier-one equity ratio to 12.7%, according to brokerage Berenberg, from 13.7% at the end of the first quarter. That is just a fraction above Deutsche Bank’s new minimum targeted ratio of 12.5%.


Christian Sewing, CEO of German bank Deutsche Bank, is pictured during the company's annual general meeting in Frankfurt on May 23. Photo: daniel roland/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images


It is also unclear just how committed Chief Executive Christian Sewing is to getting out of investment banking. He may be quitting equities trading, but he is keeping the U.S. leveraged finance division, which lends money in private-equity deals. Presumably this is because the business is making good returns, but it is also at risk of overheating and has little to do with the new strategy. Credit Suissehas sent similarly mixed messages by keeping U.S. structured finance even as it tries to refocus on fast-growing Asian wealth management. Both companies would do better to sell the units while they can get good prices.

Hidden within Deutsche Bank is a solid business serving big companies’ banking needs. For the industry, revenue from these clients should grow at four times the rate of revenue from money managers what during the period through 2021, according to a report by Morgan Stanley and Oliver Wyman. Deutsche Bank needs to do everything it can to tap this growth—free of distractions.