How a Pillar of German Banking Lost Its Way
Article

How a Pillar of German Banking Lost Its Way

The Deutsche Bank Downfall

Ullrich Fichtner, Hauke Goos and Martin Hesse
Der Spiegel, 2016
Read the article

Read or listen offline

Amazon Kindle
áudio gerado automaticamente
  • 0.5×
  • 0.75×
  • 1×
  • 1.25×
  • 1.5×
  • 1.75×
1×
áudio gerado automaticamente

Editorial Rating

5

Qualities

  • Eye Opening

Recommendation

“Deutsche Bank as we once knew it is dead.” Such is the conclusion of three veteran reporters in Germany’s newsmagazine Der Spiegel. Not without nostalgia, the authors provide a scathing critique of how Germany’s largest bank, once exemplifying solid “German values,” turned into a global investment bank embroiled in a series of financial scandals. The authors are pessimistic about the bank’s future, suggesting that it might not be able to survive. getAbstract recommends this article, which is partly an institutional history and partly a passionate wake-up call, to anybody interested in Germany’s iconic institution and German tax payers.

Summary

Deutsche Bank is a pillar of the global financial system and the German economy. Up until the 1990s, Germany’s largest bank was a major shareholder in almost all large German corporations and the go-to retail bank for millions of Germans. Indeed, the bank used to symbolize German efficiency and reliability. Faced with a changing world economy and lured by the high profits made by investment bankers in the US and the UK, then-Deutsche Bank CEO Hilmar Kopper decided to turn Deutsche Bank into a global investment bank in 1995. By 2007, Deutsche Bank’s “super-traders...

About the Authors

Ullrich Fichtner, Hauke Goos and Martin Hesse are reporters at German’s weekly newsmagazine Der Spiegel.

Comment on this summary or Iniciar a Discussão