Deutsche Bank (NYSE: DB) announced Tuesday that first quarter profit surged nearly 50 percent due to fewer write-downs and strong results from its investment banking unit. The bank said it earned 1.76 billion euros ($2.34 billion) in the period, up from 1.19 billion euros a year earlier. The result topped estimates as analysts were looking for 1.39 billion euros.
Deutsche Bank said first quarter revenue rose to 9 billion euros, up 24 percent from 7.2 billion euros a year earlier.
“The economic environment clearly stabilized in the first quarter 2010, but is not without some remaining vulnerability. In this environment, Deutsche Bank has once again demonstrated its earnings power, and has achieved the second best quarterly pre-tax result ever,” said Dr. Josef Ackermann, Chairman of the Management Board.
The firm’s investment banking unit fueled the first quarter growth, posting pretax earnings of 2.71 billion euros, up from 1.54 billion euros in the period a year ago.
“The key component for achieving the very good result in the first quarter 2010 was our global investment banking franchise,” added Ackermann. This is all the more remarkable as it was achieved despite the fact that the Bank has significantly reduced its risk positions and cut its proprietary trading activities to a very low level.”
Looking ahead, Deutsche Bank is aiming to cut costs by 1 billion euros in an effort to reach a pretax profit of 10 billion euros for the full-year of 2011.
