Deutsche announces fresh writedowns
Deutsche Bank announced fresh writedowns on Thursday, taking its bill from the global financial crisis beyond $11 billion (5.5 billion pounds).
RBS profits up 9 percentGermany's flagship financier had originally been seen as one of the winners in the chaos but as the problems on global markets continue, Deutsche Bank is being sucked ever deeper into trouble.
The group's pretax profit collapsed in the second quarter to 642 million euros - a fraction of the 2.7 billion euros it made a year earlier as writedowns ate into its bottom line.
Its bill from the turmoil, while modest compared to Swiss rival UBS, has overtaken that of its Zurich-based competitor Credit Suisse, which has made about $8 billion of writedowns.
The extra damage in the second quarter, however, had been broadly expected and Deutsche's shares were just 0.4 percent lower at 0724 GMT, in line with European rivals .
"We remain cautious for the remainder of 2008," said Chief Executive Josef Ackermann, who also chairs top global banking group the Institute of International Finance.
His remarks contrast sharply with his bullish statements of the past.
As late as last November, Ackermann signalled he saw no further writedowns and stood by his goal of making a pretax profit of 8.4 billion euros this year, a target that has since been quietly dropped. So far this year, it made roughly 400 million euros.
On Thursday, Deutsche listed its latest injuries from the global crisis.
The bank made 1 billion euros of writedowns in residential mortgage-backed securities and a further 500 million euros linked to monoline insurers. Commercial real estate investments cost it 300 million euros.
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