Of course the legal troubles are just the tip of the iceberg of what has been going on over at Deutsche Bank over the past couple of years. The following is a pretty good timeline of some of the major events that have hit Deutsche Bank since the beginning of last year. It comes from a NotQuant article that was published back in June entitled “Is Deutsche Bank the next Lehman?“:
- In April of 2014, Deutsche Bank was forced to raise an additional 1.5 Billion of Tier 1 capital to support its capital structure. Why?
- 1 month later in May of 2014, the scramble for liquidity continued as DB announced the selling of 8 billion euros worth of stock—at up to a 30 percent discount. Why again? It was a move which raised eyebrows across the financial media. The calm outward image of Deutsche Bank did not seem to reflect their rushed efforts to raise liquidity. Something was decidedly rotten behind the curtain.
- Fast forwarding to March of this year: Deutsche Bank fails the banking industry’s “stress tests” and is given a stern warning to shore up it’s [sic] capital structure.
- In April, Deutsche Bank confirms its agreement to a joint settlement with the US and UK regarding the manipulation of LIBOR. The bank is saddled with a massive $2.1 billion payment to the DOJ. (Still, a small fraction of their winnings from the crime).
- In May, one of Deutsche Bank’s CEOs, Anshu Jain is given an enormous amount of new authority by the board of directors. We guess that this is a “crisis move.” In times of crisis the power of the executive is often increased.
- June 5: Greece misses its payment to the IMF. The risk of default across all of its debt is now considered acute. This has massive implications for Deutsche Bank.
- June 6/7: (A Saturday/Sunday, and immediately following Greece’s missed payment to the IMF) Deutsche Bank’s two CEO’s announce their surprise departure from the company. (Just one month after Jain is given his new expanded powers). Anshu Jain will step down first at the end of June. Jürgen Fitschen will step down next May.
- June 9: S&P lowers the rating of Deutsche Bank to BBB+ Just three notches above “junk”. (Incidentally, BBB+ is even lower than Lehman’s downgrade—which preceded its collapse by just 3 months)
Are you starting to get the picture? These are not signs of a healthy bank.
What makes things even worse is how recklessly Deutsche Bank has been behaving. At one point, it was estimated that Deutsche Bank had a staggering 75 trillion dollars worth of exposure to derivatives. Keep in mind that German GDP for an entire year is only about 4 trillion dollars. So when Deutsche Bank finally collapses, there won’t be enough money in Europe (or anywhere else for that matter) to clean up the mess. This is a perfect example of why I am constantly hammering on the danger of these “weapons of financial mass destruction”.
If Deutsche Bank were to totally collapse, it would be a financial disaster far worse than Lehman Brothers. It would literally take down the entire European financial system and cause global financial panic on a scale that none of us have ever seen before.
On a personal note, I apologize for not posting anything last week. I traveled to two very important conferences and was living out of a suitcase for about eight days.
There has been a bit of a lull in the action over the past couple of weeks, but I expect that to end very shortly. I believe that the rest of 2015 is going to be incredibly chaotic, and we are going to see some things happen that most people could not even conceive of right now.
In the days that are directly ahead, I encourage people to keep a close eye on both Germany and Japan.
Big things are about to happen, and millions are about to be totally shaken out of their complacency.
