Status: 15.09.2021 3:49 p.m.
In a study, the research department of Deutsche Bank issued the financial center Germany an “absolute certificate of poverty”. However, the criticism is too harsh for the money house: The bank distances itself publicly.
It can be described as good and unusual for a bank to cash in on the study of an in-house think tank. This is now the case with the largest German financial institution: The analysis “Reform agenda for the financial center Germany dpa is available and from which the “Börsen-Zeitung” quotes, the parent company probably went too far. She deleted it from the website shortly after it was published.
The study was apparently not authorized
The department’s experts describe the state of Germany as a financial center as miserable. According to the author, the “list of deficits and failures” is very long. “For the world’s fourth largest economy, this is an absolute sign of poverty. Just like the factual refusal of the decision-makers in politics to even acknowledge the infirmity of the financial center and to counter it with powerful, decisive measures.” Not a single major country in the world has neglected its banking industry as neglected and watched it being dulled like Germany, it says in the draft.
Deutsche Bank distanced itself from the criticism. The study published by Deutsche Bank Research on Tuesday “reflects the author’s views,” a spokesman for the money house said in writing today in Frankfurt. “These are not shared by Deutsche Bank, nor have they been authorized by the management of Deutsche Bank Research,” he said. In particular, Deutsche Bank and Deutsche Bank Research distanced themselves from the “criticism that is inappropriate in content and form” of supervisory authorities and political decision-makers expressed in the study.
Strong criticism of BaFin as well
In the 20-page report, the author also clearly criticizes the financial supervisory authority BaFin: “There is probably – unfortunately – hardly any financial supervisory authority in the industrialized countries under whose eyes so many financial scandals have taken place in the last 15 years the financial supervisory authority as a whole gave such a bad, even partially dysfunctional picture, like the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin). “
It goes on to say: “The experiences of the last few years were simply embarrassing for Germany, the local financial supervisory authority is likely to have suffered a serious loss of image both with its international counterparts and with the financial institutions and is in some cases hardly taken seriously.”
The reorientation of BaFin after the Wirecard scandal was “actually more than overdue,” writes the author. For a long time, “the resistance to obviously necessary, urgently required changes (…) within the institutions, including the Ministry of Finance and the Bundestag, seemed to have been too dominant (…),” he said.
Financial center “slumbering”
Overall, according to the author, the German financial center has “structurally remained in a deep slumber for many years.” In an international comparison, the local financial center has “fallen dramatically behind” in recent years. This applies to the entire financial sector, but above all to the banking industry. “It is chronically weak, structurally sclerotic, extremely unprofitable and far too inefficient,” it says.
Deutsche Bank did not want to comment on the question of who authorized the study. DB Research is headed by David Folkerts-Landau, the bank’s chief economist.