A Complete List Of ‘Challenges’ Faced By Deutsche Bank In 2016 And Beyond
John Cryan isn’t going to beat around the bush: The past year was a challenge. Indeed, the word “challenge” or some variation of it appears 64 times in Deutsche Bank’s most recent annual report, published Monday. Though it’s commonplace for annual reports to note a litany of challenges faced, the absolute number of them brought up here is a rare feat, for which Deutsche Bank deserves accolades. No one had an easy 2016, but few banks had it worse than DB.
So as a favor to shareholders, schadenfreude enthusiasts and current DB employees, we’re presenting the full list of things deemed “challenging” by Cryan et al in their yearly self-assessment. Suffice to say, Deutsche Bank has plenty to keep its hands full. (Interestingly, however, “paying employees enough” did not come up.)
- Leakage of discussions with U.S. Justice Department over mortgage settlement
- “Conditions”
- Regulation and technology
- Implementation of Strategy 2020
- Implementation of the bank’s corporate culture within its organizational structures
- Topics that will shape the future and “prompt handling of numerous, critical special issues from the past”
- The market environment in 2016
- The macroeconomic environment in the eurozone
- Low interest rates
- A volatile geopolitical backdrop and its implications for global trade
- “Adverse speculation” about Deutsche Bank’s health
- Equities
- The risk management environment in equity derivatives
- Persistent structural factors such as oversupply and “redundancy of certain types of ships”
- Private Wealth and Commercial Clients Corporate Division’s business environment
- Generating sustainable returns
- The economic outlook in the eurozone
- Regional independence efforts in the European Union
- Reduction in global trade volumes
- Strategic rationalization of our client and country perimeter
- A slow-down in client activity
- Fee compression
- Competition
- 2016