These are hard times for Deutsehe Bank, despite its huge strides in investment banking. Next week its chief executive, Josef Ackerman, goes on trial in Dusseldorf. Careless words by Rolf Breuer, the head of its supervisory board, led to another court ruling last month that may cost Germany’ s biggest bank several hundred million euros in damages. Then there is Parmalat. Although no evidence has emerged of complicity in the Italian dairy group’ s fraud, Deutsche’ s name has become entwined in the affair.
In many other respects, however, Deutsche’ s reputation has never been higher. In dubbing it " Bank of the Year 2003", International Financing Review, the capital markets’ favorite newssheet, purred that Deutsche was a "lean, aggressive, focused universal bank" In the league tables that investment banks watch so keenly, Deutsche excelled last year as lead manager of bonds and convertible bonds and of some racier products, such as repackaged debt securities and high-yield "junk" bonds. In other disciplines it rarely fell below the top ten in the world.
However, it is still nowhere near the top in equity offerings and advice on mergers and acquisitions, except in Germany. It still has a problem with costs,which were a fat 82% of income in the third quarter of 2003, thanks mainly to the thick pay packets of its investment bankers and its poor returns from corporate and retail banking.
Mr. Ackermann must try to improve the weak spots while spending two clays a week, probably until June, in a courtroom. He and four others face charges of "breach of trust" over the way bonuses were awarded to board meinbers of Mannesmann, a telecoms company. Mr. Aekermann sat on Mannesmann’ s supervisory board. There is no suggestion that he gained personally. Nor was there any harmful intent in Mr. Breuer’ s remarks in a television interview about the financial health of the Kirch media group shortly before its bankruptcy. But he was careless, and a Munich court found Deutsche (but not Mr. Breuer) liable for damages, to be set in due course, without right of appeal. The bank said this week it has lodged a protest with the federal supreme court in Karlsruhe. Meanwhile, Kirch has filed a suit against Deutsche in America.
Deutsche’s involvement with Parmalat also looks sloppy. It led a 350m bond issue fur the group in September. It was also a leading borrower and lender of Parma[at shares, so that in November it technically held the voting rights to over 5% of Parmalat stock. That stake had fallen to 1.5% by December 19th, the day the dairy company’s black hole became public. It reported this, perhaps over-zealously, to the Italian authorities. That may have given the wrong impression, say, sources close to the bank, because the transactions were for third parties.
This is awkward for a bank that managed to avoid most serious attacks on conflicts of interest thai beset the investment-banking industry following the collapse of Enron in 2001 and the bursting of the tech-stock bubble. Mr. Ackermann will need a clear head to steer the bank through the coming storms.
It can be inferred from the text that（）
A. the chief executive of Deutsche will be found guilty by court
B. it is yet to be found whether Deutsche is involved ira the fraud
C. Deutsche’ s reputation has been ruined by its present problems
D. the head of Deutsche’ s supervisory board is a shrewd banker
