Banks to need capital, says Ackermann
DEUTSCHE Bank chief executive Josef Ackermann issued a cautious assessment of recovery in the banking sector yesterday, saying that lenders might still need more capital.
Speaking at the “Banking in Transition” conference in Frankfurt, Ackermann said some banks would need to raise new capital and predicted that the real estate market would go through further corrections, while stock markets would be volatile.
But he said banks had learned from the crisis and were now seeing “light at the end of the tunnel”.
Ackermann also said that he would make a decision on whether his bank would acquire part of private bank Sal Oppenheim in the next few weeks, but refused to say if it would take a majority stake.
Deutsche, Germany’s largest bank by market capitalisation, has already made an initial non-binding bid for the Luxembourg-based bank.
And Ackermann added that the bank expected new opportunities to beef up its market share in investment banking, but said the bank would not take any risks.
He also echoed recent warnings from UK banking figures that any changes to compensation structures must be agreed globally, to avoid a brain drain of talent to less heavily regulated jurisdictions.
Asked about the health of his own bank, Ackermann said the bank’s Tier 1 capital ratio was now greater than 11 per cent and that the company had adopted a more conservative refinancing approach.
FAST FACTS DEUTSCHE BANK
&9679; Founded in Berlin in 1870, Deutsche Bank employs nearly 79,000 people in 72 countries.
&9679; The bank booked net income of €2.25bn (£1.97bn) in the first half of 2009, up from €500m in the same period last year.