The business daily Handelsblatt reports that the head of security for Deutsche Bank has been put on temporary leave pending an internal investigation concerning possible snooping on bank employees:
ausgespäht worden sein. Im Visier standen dagegen hochrangige
Mitarbeiter des Konzerns. Darunter soll sich auch der für das
Tagesgeschäft verantwortliche Vorstand Hermann-Josef Lamberti befunden
haben. Möglicherweise soll auch der für die Konzernsicherheit
zuständige Risiko-Vorstand Hugo Bänziger betroffen sein. (Supposedly, members of the advisory board, bank clients and journalists were not targets of the spying. On the other hand, high-level employees of the bank were being spied upon. This allegedly included Hermann-Josef Lamberti, DB board member responsible for day-to-day business and the head of risk management Hugo Baenziger).
The question now is whether this spying operation will expand into a major scandal such as at Deutsche Telekom which engaged in Stasi-like spying into sex lives of its employees.
But profits trump ethics at Deutsche Bank, and spy scandal failed to derail the extension of CEO Josef Ackermann's contract to continue running the bank through 2013. A jubilant Ackermann reiterated his commitment to achieve a 25% return on equity, which prompted this observation in the TAZ:
Finanzkrise in Wahrheit bedeutet: Ihr Geschäftsmodell ist am Ende. Oder
anders gesagt: Die Banken werden stark schrumpfen müssen, wenn es nicht
zu einer neuen Krise kommen soll. (Evidently many bankers haven't understood what the financial crisis really means: their business model is finished. Or, to put it in other words, the banks will have to shrink substantially to avoid yet another crisis.)
Die exorbitanten Gewinne der Banken sind bisher
entstanden, indem die Institute dramatisch "gehebelt" haben: Auf
gigantische Bilanzsummen kam nur geringes Eigenkapital. Der Rest waren
Schulden und Spareinlagen. Die Banken operierten, als wären sie
Hedgefonds. Sie setzten möglichst viel fremdes Geld ein, um den eigenen
Gewinn zu steigern. Da war es leicht, eindrucksvolle
Eigenkapitalrenditen vorzuzeigen. Das war ein Geschäftsmodell für Hasardeure und dürfte keine Zukunft haben. (The exorbitant profits of the banks were achieved through excessive leverage. There was only minimal equity capital supporting gigantic balance sheets. The rest was debt and savings accounts. The banks operated like hedge funds. They deployed as many borrowed funds as possible in order to increase profits. So it was not hard to display impressibe returns on capital. It was the business model for gamblers and is unsustainable.)(Note: this is the same "culture of risk" that DB employee Deepak Moorjani warned about.)
Separately, attac in Germany has criticized Deutsche Bank for profiting from the financial crisis for which it is partially responsible:
Krise mitverursacht, dann durch Rettungspakete profitiert und verdient
nun über das Geschäft mit Staatsanleihen auch noch an der Krise. Daher
muss sichergestellt werden, dass die Gewinne der Gesellschaft
zurückgegeben werden. (With its focus on investment banking, Deutsche Bank is in part responsible for the crisis, but then profited from the rescue packages and now is earning fees in the crises from underwriting government bonds. Everything must be done to ensure that these profits are returned….)

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Handelsblatt is on Kindle for $1.25 per issue or $14.99 per month.
FAZ downloads for $.75.
I sound like a salesperson, don’t I? But really it’s such a great thing to get that substantive content with no paper to deal with. And ad free, too!
Did you want that ad about regulating menstrual periods, David?
🙂
Vielen Dank für den Austausch von nützlichen Informationen ….