Deutsche Bank is the last heavyweight contender. While the other European investment banks — Barclays, UBS and Credit Suisse among them — retreat to retail and private banking amid investor discontent and a regulatory squeeze, it is doing the opposite. It wants to become more like Goldman Sachs, not less.
“I am not a very patient person,” Antony Jenkins, chief executive of Barclays,declared last month, hinting that lacklustre results at its investment bank may provoke him to cut it back. Deutsche is patient. Despite upheavals, setbacks and suspicion in its conservative home market, it has grown its investment bank over three decades, since buying Morgan Grenfell in 1989.
I am glad that Deutsche has, and that it still wants to compete with what was once called the “bulge bracket” — banks and brokers led by Goldman Sachs andMorgan Stanley. Europe needs at least one global investment bank champion. Without one, it is in danger of leaning too much on Wall Street to shape and run capital markets that its companies — large and small — require.