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Deutsche Bank said its 2022 profits were the highest in 15 years, thanks to a new strategy, boss Christian Sewing said on Thursday.
A hefty tax credit also helped.
Sewing reaffirmed his goal of achieving “sustainable” growth in the coming years and further increasing returns for shareholders.
The bank’s pre-tax profits grew 65% last year to reach €5.6 billion ($6.16 billion), the bank said. Net income more than doubled year-on-year to around €5.7 billion.
After deducting interest payments to bond holders, shareholders had more than €5 billion in profits, up from €1.9 billion a year earlier.
The bank also benefited from a one-off tax credit of €1.4 billion.
The latest figures see the bank return to the kind of high profit levels it had reported before the 2008 financial crisis.
In 2007, a record year, Deutsche Bank posted a pre-tax profit of more than €8.7 billion. But the bank was forced to make considerable changes following the crisis, after which it reported losses for five consecutive years, up to and including 2019.
In summer 2019, Sewing, who had been promoted to the chief executive post just over a year earlier, fundamentally realigned the group, trimming its investment banking activities, ending global equity trading and pressing ahead with the integration of Germany’s Postbank into its retail banking business.
“The transformation of Deutsche Bank over the past three and a half years has been a success,” Sewing said Thursday. “By focusing on our strengths, we have become significantly more profitable, diversified and efficient.”
Deutsche Bank’s business with private clients and corporations performed particularly well, with the corporate bank more than doubling pre-tax profits to €2.1 billion. At €2 billion, the private clients bank earned more than five times as much as a year earlier. The two segments together yielded more than the investment bank, which had powered Deutsche Bank’s success.
In 2022, the investment bank’s profit fell by 6% to €3.5 billion. Asset management also reported lower yields, with pre-tax profits at in-house fund company DWS falling by 27% to €598 million.
