(14 March 2016 – Germany) Deutsche Bank’s Chief Executive, John Cryan has warned the banking industry that volatile financial markets in the first quarter posed a challenge for the sector as a whole.
“Deutsche Bank is no exception to this. Nonetheless, in this period of market turbulence, Deutsche Bank remains very solid,” Cryan said in the lender's annual report published last week.
Those predicitions have been echoed by other investments banks, including Citigroup and JPMorgan.
Citigroup indicated that investment banking revenue is off by 25 percent in the first quarter, compared to the same period in 2015, blaming the downturn’s impact on trading and new issuance.
In February, JPMorgan signalled a rocky first quarter with double-digit declines in investment banking revenues as companies are either shying away from or unable to issue debt and equity and investors are reluctant to take on more risk.
Following a record loss for 2015, Cryan took to writing to investor to in late January urging them to be patient with the bank’s ongoing restructure.
In the annual report, the bank reported that its bonus pool for 2015 cost €US2.4 billion (A$3.6 billion), a drop of 17 percent even as staff has grown by 2966 people, or three percent.