Corrected: Deutsche Bank reaffirms year goal after Q4 charges
Deutsche Bank
Chief executive Josef Ackermann said on Thursday the bank remained on track to meet ambitious profit goals while being fully aware of the remaining risks and uncertainties in the overall economic environment.
Germany's flagship lender has said it sees pretax profit of 10 billion euros ($13.8 billion) in 2011. A Reuters poll showed that the bank was not expected to get close to that figure before 2012.
Late on Monday, Deutsche Bank revealed lower-than-expected fourth-quarter pretax profit, weighed down by charges to restructure the investment bank and integration costs for Deutsche Postbank
The lender maintained its dividend of 0.75 euros per share, undershooting consensus for 0.82 euros.
Also on Thursday, the euro zone's largest bank, Santander
At Deutsche Bank, 2010 charges included a 400 million euro hit for revamping wealth manager Sal. Oppenheim and BHF Bank, as well as fourth-quarter costs related to the decision to accelerate strategic investments to realign the bank.
Analysts said Deutsche Bank's results were solid once the one-off factors were taken out.
The good news is that the pretax miss they forewarned about on Monday seems entirely driven by restructuring costs. The underlying results look pretty good, said Matthew Clark, an analyst at Keefe Bruyette & Woods.
Of the 707 million euros in group pretax profit in the fourth quarter, 625 million was generated by the corporate banking and securities division, Deutsche Bank said on Thursday.
Higher revenue at the investment bank signal strong earnings momentum, bucking a trend set by rivals. Sales and trading revenue, traditionally Deutsche Bank's cash cow, rose 30 percent year on year, cheered by analysts.
The revenues were very good, especially in the investment banking division, where the revenues have never been as high in a fourth quarter, Dirk Becker, analyst at Kepler equities said.
This month, U.S. banks showed signs of weaker investment banking activity as Wall Street powerhouse Goldman Sachs
One-off factors weighed on Deutsche Bank's pretax return on average shareholder's equity, which was 14.7 percent in the full year 2010, a far cry from the bank's goal of 25 percent pretax return on average equity.
($1 = 0.7224 euro)
(Reporting by Edward Taylor, Michelle Martin and Arno Schuetze; Editing by Will Waterman and David Hulmes)
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