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