FRANKFURT |
FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Josef Ackermann’s reign at Deutsche Bank ended in a surprise quarterly loss on Thursday, with the bank hit by a downturn in bond trading due to the euro zone crisis and writedowns on holdings in drug and gambling companies.
Ackermann has presided over the country’s largest bank as chief executive for a decade, overseeing a drive into investment banking, and is a household name in Germany.
Deutsche Bank posted a fourth-quarter pretax loss of 351 million euros ($463 million) compared with a 707 million euro profit in the same period the year before. The result was well below the 1.05 billion euro profit forecast in a Reuters poll.
“The results are a catastrophe,” said analyst Dirk Becker from brokerage Kepler, adding the bank’s results would have more or less met consensus without one-off items.
Writedowns on Deutsche Bank’s exposure to pharmaceuticals company Actavis, Cosmopolitan casinos and wealth manager BHF Bank led to a 722 million euro pretax loss
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