a thread on #DeutscheBank evolution from to and from 'behemoth that relies heavily on global securities markets', and its role in changing German and European macro-finance (from @euromoney archives)

it's 1999, and #DeutscheBank men - sumo wrestlers, "straight out of central casting" - are changing business model to confront more aggressively the US investment banks

investment banking, they argue, will pay for low-returns retail banking (note the irony)

investment banking adventure was nearly cut short by poor performance, but then LTCM happened, and cleared the field of competitors

#DeutscheBank nearly bought Lehman Brothers/JP Morgan in the late 1990s!

it settled for Bankers Trust, with its equity intensive business - being demolished 30 years later

#Deutsche was front-row bank pushing Bank of England to lift its protecting hand from the gilt (repo) market in mid 1990s, promising liquidity after liberalisation

most importantly, Deutsche used the euro as platform to successfully defeat German authorities' deep mistrust of market-based finance, and give us the dysfunctional macrofinance architecture with Bunds as safe assets for Eurozone

here is @bundesbank president Hans Tietmeyer telling #DeutscheBank president Rolf Breuer that it wasnt his job to help German investment banks' narrative of Paris vs Frankfurt.

Tietmeyer had other plans: for ECB to adopt Bundesbank repo rules that made #DeutscheBank securities financing activities more expensive in Germany. He was a visionary, with tighter rules for #shadowbanking markets than FSB would eventually put in place

eventually, Tietmeyer lifted rules restricting #DeutscheBank capital markets activities. Why? Age of financial globalization pre-Lehman is age of competition btw central banks for liquidity in securities markets, even more for those joining the euro - see the war rhetoric

one day, someone will write a good history of #DeutscheBank infrastructural power (as @BJMbraun calls it) in European macro-finance , for now I leave you with my history of repo markets where these struggles have been fought over past 30 years tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.108…