Deutsche Bank Group Asia

ABOUT THIS COMPANY:

Deutsche Bank is organized into three divisions: the Corporate and Investment Bank (CIB), Private Clients and Asset Management (PCAM), and Corporate Investments. The whole group is directed by a management board, which controls resource allocation, accounting and disclosure, strategy and risk management.

Deutsche Bank's CIB group oversees the firm's capital markets business, including the origination, sales and trading of capital markets products, in tandem with the bank's corporate advisory, corporate lending and transaction banking businesses. It also oversees mergers and acquisitions and gives general corporate finance advice primarily for global corporations, financial institutions, and sovereign and multinational organizations.

Deutsche Bank's PCAM group 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.

With approximately USD$818 billion in assets under management globally as of March 30, 2008, 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. In 2007, the private wealth management unit increased assets by 3 percent, ending the year with EUR 194 billion.

The smallest of the three divisions, the Corporate Investments group, manages Deutsche's own industrial and other holdings, real estate assets, private equity investments and venture capital holdings. This division was at the center of a comprehensive streamlining plan in 2005; non-core assets were sold off, and the division's old three-part structure was consolidated into a single operating unit.

The German giant

Germany's biggest bank first opened its doors in Berlin in 1870, operating under a very specific motto: "to transact banking business of all kinds, in particular to promote and facilitate trade relations between Germany, other European countries and overseas markets." In 1872 the bank opened its first foreign branches in Shanghai and in Yokohama, Japan. By 1880, the bank was engaging in industrial investment activities, making deals across borders in Asia, Turkey and the Americas, and in 1929, it merged with Disconto-Gesellschaft, the biggest merger in German banking history. World War II nearly destroyed Germany's financial services industry; Deutsche Bank was shut down by occupying Soviet forces in 1945. Its West Berlin operations were decentralized into 10 regional institutions, which were then combined into three joint-stock companies. In 1957, these three companies reunited, creating Deutsche Bank AG.

In the decades that followed, Deutsche grew rapidly, adding retail banking services and international offices in New York, Paris, Tokyo, London and Moscow. Its first U.S. purchase came in 1999, with the acquisition of Bankers Trust. Two years later, Deutsche made its public debut on the New York Stock Exchange; in 2002, it bought U.S. asset manager Scudder Investments. These days, it's casting its net even wider. In 2006, Deutsche completed the acquisition of Russian investment bank United Financial Group.

Some of Deutsche Bank's recent growth has been tempered by a few setbacks. During 2006, Deutsche added more than 5,400 people, expanding its presence in North America, Latin America, the Middle East, Central and Eastern Europe, and Asia--especially in India and China. In the Asia Pacific region, the bank has over 54 offices in 17 financial markets. But in January 2008, the firm announced employee job cuts that would reach nearly every department--and all around the globe. The first wave of cutbacks came within the month, when the bank slashed about 300 positions within its global markets unit. Over the course of the first quarter of 2008, those numbers inflated to 1,000 global job reductions, mostly in mortgage banking areas. In the meantime, the firm has said that additional reductions are not planned.

During 2007, Deutsche Bank's Asia Pacific workforce expanded from 10,800 to more than 15,100 -- a 40 percent increase -- as another 4,000 jobs were created in the region. Globally, almost half of the 9,400-employee increase at Deutsche Bank in 2007 was added in the Asia Pacific region. Despite continued uncertainty in the industry globally, Deutsche Bank continues to expand in the region.