All around the world

Boasting nearly 97,000 employees across more than 70 countries, Deutsche Bank truly has a global footprint, with particularly strength in Europe and its homeland of Germany.  Deutsche Bank's international presence encompasses retail banking branches, corporate and investment banking and asset management.  It's made up of two main divisions: corporate and investment bank (CIB), and private clients and asset management (PCAM). The whole group is directed by a management board, which controls resource allocation, accounting and disclosure, strategy and risk management. 

Deutsche Bank's corporate and investment bank group oversees the capital markets (origination, sales and trading), corporate advisory, corporate lending and transaction banking businesses.  It also oversees mergers and acquisitions, and gives general corporate finance advice primarily to global corporations, financial institutions and sovereign entities.

Deutsche Bank's private clients and asset management group, or PCAM, comprises two subdivisions: asset and wealth management services, and private and business client services. Its asset management services include traditional asset management and alternative investments, the latter encompassing absolute-return strategies and specialist real estate asset management.  Its client base includes retail clients and institutional investors such as pension funds.   The asset management group at Deutsche Bank is one of the largest asset managers in the world.  The bank's private wealth management division caters to high-net-worth individuals and families. It offers traditional and alternative investments, risk management strategies, lending, wealth transfer planning and philanthropic advisory, among others services.

A complex history

In 1870, a private banker named Adelbert Delbruck and a politician named Ludwig Bamberger opened Deutsche Bank in Berlin as a specialist bank for foreign trade.  By 1876, it had become the largest bank in Germany and, by 1880, investments were scattered across the globe, including in North and South America, Eastern Asia and Turkey.  Before the turn of the century, the German giant had invested in projects like the Northern Pacific Railroad in the U.S. and the Baghdad Railway.

After World War II, Deutsche Bank closed its offices in Soviet-occupied areas and was scattered into 10 regional offices while western Germany was under occupation.  By 1957, the bank had regained its footing as a unified Deutsche Bank AG with headquarters in Frankfurt am Main.  By 1986, the firm made its first major bank acquisition outside of Germany with the purchase of Banca d'America e d'Italia.  Other acquisitions included the Morgan Grenfell Group (1989), the U.S. Bankers Trust (1999), the U.S. asset manager Scudder Investments (2002), the Swiss private bank Rued Blass & Cie (2003) and the Russian investment bank United Financial Group (2006).

DB's shares have been listed on the Berlin Stock Exchange since the bank's birth in 1870.  The bank also listed in Frankfurt in 1880, on the Paris Stock Exchange (now Euronext) in 1974, on the Brussels exchange (also now Euronext) in 1979, in Tokyo in 1989 and on the New York Stock Exchange in 2001.