Financial industry: Deutsche Bank has made the highest profit since 2007

Deutsche Bank has earned as much in the second quarter as it has not been in almost 20 years. After surprisingly good business, Germany’s largest money house sees itself on a good way for significantly more profit in the current year. “We are very pleased to have made the highest profit since 2007 both in the second quarter and in the first half of the year,” said CEO Christian Sewing in Frankfurt. “This means that we are on track to achieve our goals for 2025.” In the second quarter, a profit of almost 1.5 billion euros was eliminated in the second quarter, and thus significantly more than expected from analysts. A year earlier, the DAX group had booked a loss of 143 million due to a billion-dollar provision in the dispute over the earlier Postbank takeover.

Input tax gain more than doubled

In the first half of the year, Deutsche Bank earned almost 3.3 billion euros and thus almost three times as much as a year earlier. Before taxes, it was 5.3 billion euros. That was more than twice as much as a year earlier and about as much as in the entire year 2024.

The bank increased its yields – i.e. the total income – in the first half of the year in the first half of the year by six percent to 16.3 billion euros and thus expected more than analysts. Sewing has made 32 billion euros for the year as a whole and now sees this goal within reach.

Strong investment banking

All business areas contributed to the increase in profits: Both the corporate bank as well as the investment bank, private customer bank and the fund subsidiary DWS earned more than a year earlier. In the first half of the year, investment banking delivered the most input tax, which included business with advice in mergers and takeover and the trade in bonds.

Thanks to higher earnings, sunken costs and less risk provision for credit cases, the long -term crisis -shaped money house also managed to increase profitability: the return on material equity was 10.1 percent in the second quarter and in the first half of the year even 11 percent – and thus over the mark of Sewing, which Sewing wants to exceed in the current year.

He announced a new renovation program in January entitled “Deutsche Bank 3.0”. Management sees potential to reduce costs through slimmer hierarchies and more use of artificial intelligence. It was only in March that Deutsche Bank announced that it would be deleted about 2,000 jobs this year and further reduce the number of branches.

If one calculates special items such as the provisions in the Postbank dispute, Deutsche Bank now kept its costs almost stable in the first half of the year with 10.1 billion euros. The entire cost of only 62.3 percent of the income all over the group.

Targeted more money for shareholders

Sewing thus sees his goal within reach of pressing this much -noticed quota to less than 65 percent in the current year. For comparison: In 2023 and 2024, Deutsche Bank had to spend more than 75 cents for every euro. Now the bank wants to spend even more money on buying its own shares. She had applied for another share buyback for the current year from the supervisory authority. If it is approved, the dividends and stock returns could exceed the total of EUR 2.1 billion that had previously been expected for 2025.