Deutsche Bank May Have Underestimated How Litigious People Are About The Whole Mortgage Catastrophe Thing

Remember Deutsche Bank's rather poor earnings report a couple of months ago? Well, it turns out that things have gotten worse, because people and regulators continue to sue Frankfurt's most downtrodden bank.

Author:: Jon Shazar
Updated:: Jan 14, 2019
Original:: Mar 20, 2013

Remember Deutsche Bank's rather poor earnings report a couple of months ago? Well, it turns out that things have gotten worse, because people and regulators continue to sue Frankfurt's most downtrodden bank.

Deutsche Bank cut its previously reported 2012 pretax profit by 600 million euros ($773 million) on Wednesday, hit by new charges related to mortgage-related lawsuits and other regulatory investigations.
Europe's biggest bank by assets declined to lay out in detail why it had increased litigation provisions to 2.4 billion euros, forcing it to correct a January 31 earnings report which already showed the worst quarterly loss in four years.

Lawsuits force Deutsche Bank to restate 2012 profits [Reuters]
Deutsche Bank Profit Hit by Higher Provisions [WSJ]

(Getty Images)

Better to let the new guy know what he’s in for, assuming there will actually be a new guy.

A couple weeks back, Deutsche Bank vice chairman and managing director Brian Mulligan filed a claim with the city of Los Angeles, letting people know he intended to sue for $50 million over an incident that took place involving the LAPD, which left the media banker with “a broken shoulder blade and 15 nasal fractures.” According to Mulligan, police officers abducted him from a street corner, drove him to a motel, told him to wait there for a few hours, and then beat him so "ruthlessly" he "barely looked human" when they were done. According the LAPD, several calls had been placed about a man in the area "trying to break into cars" that fit Mulligan's description. They confronted the guy, who told them he was tired, which was why they drove him to the motel. He emerged hours later, started running through traffic, failed to heed their orders to get out of the street and assumed a "fighting stance," hence the need to deal with him in an aggressive fashion. At the time, a spokesman for the LA County DA’s office said that there are no plans to file criminal charges and that the office would simply like to “have a discussion" with Mulligan to advise him on "how best to follow the law so that incidents like this don’t occur again.” Also, it's possible he was experimenting with bath salts. The police report states that Mulligan was sweating profusely and walking with an unsteady gait when officers responded to reports that he was trying to break into cars in a Jack-in-the-Box parking lot. Mulligan told officers he was being chased and didn't know why. He also stated that he had ingested "white lightning" and marijuana and that he had not slept for four days. Brian Mulligan On Bath Salts: Deutsche Bank Executive Said He Was On 'White Lightning,' Police Say [HP] Earlier: Deutsche Bank Managing Director, LAPD Not Yet Seeing Eye To Eye On Savage Beating “Incident”

Getting caught money-laundering for the Iranians and drug cartels is pretty bad for business, as HSBC's 2012 results demonstrate. But coming into compliance with all these new banking regulations is even worse.

The Germans thought about it and decided yes, layoffs sound like a great idea. Deutsche Bank said it will eliminate 1,900 jobs, including 1,500 at the investment bank, as part of an effort to save 3 billion euros ($3.68 billion). Deutsche Bank, based in Frankfurt, forecast “substantial costs” to achieve the savings without giving a figure in a statement to the stock exchange today. The job reductions are part of a strategy review Anshu Jain and Juergen Fitschen, Deutsche Bank’s new co-chief executive officers, are conducting as the lender grapples with declining revenue from the investment bank, which reported a 63 percent decline in second-quarter earnings today...“The time for vague promises of cultural change in our industry is long gone,” Jain said on a conference call with analysts and reporters. Deutsche Bank’s leaders are “totally determined to act quickly and decisively.” Deutsche Bank To Cut 1,900 Jobs In Bid To Save EU3 Billion [Bloomberg]

And they're going to stay on strike until they get 5% raises and job guarantees through 2010.