追補
(米紙ニューヨーク・タイムズは25日、関係者7人の話として、ドイツ銀行がマネーロンダリング（資金洗浄）などの犯罪を防止するための法律を順守しているかどうかを調査していると報じた。
この調査には、ドナルド・トランプ大統領の娘婿で上級顧問のジャレッド・クシュナー氏に関連した取引を含む、問題のある可能性のある取引について従業員が作成した、いわゆる疑わしい活動報告書のドイツ銀行での取り扱いの見直しも含まれていると、タイムズ紙は報じています。
ドイツ銀行への調査は、不正な資金が米国の金融システムをどのように流れるかについて、政府が個別に、しかし重複して行っている調査の一要素であり、他のいくつかの銀行も調査されていると「タイムズ」紙は報じています。
今月初め、米上院民主党のグループは、ドイツ銀行とトランプ氏およびクシュナー氏との関係を調査するよう連邦準備制度理事会に求めました。
ロイターはこの報道を独自に確認できませんでした。
ドイツ銀行の広報担当者は、Timesの報道についてコメントを拒否しましたが、次のように述べています。"我々は認可された調査に協力することに変わりはない。"
(Reuters) – U.S. federal authorities are investigating whether Deutsche Bank AG complied with laws meant to stop money laundering and other crimes, the New York Times reported on Wednesday, citing seven people it said were familiar with the inquiry.
The investigation includes a review of the German bank’s handling of so-called suspicious activity reports that its employees prepared about possibly problematic transactions, including some linked to President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, the Times reported.
The investigation into Deutsche Bank is one element of several separate but overlapping government examinations into how illicit funds flow through the U.S. financial system, the Times reported, adding that several other banks are also being investigated.
Earlier this month, a group of U.S. Senate Democrats urged the Federal Reserve to investigate Deutsche Bank’s relationship with Trump and Kushner.
Reuters could not independently confirm the report.
A Deutsche Bank spokesperson declined comment on the Times report, but said: “We remain committed to cooperating with authorized investigations.”
(Reporting by Ishita Chigilli Palli and Maria Ponnezhath in Bengaluru; Editing by Bill Rigby)
追補
BERLIN (Reuters) - Deutsche Bank Chief Executive Christian Sewing is planning a major overhaul of top management, including replacing the finance chief, Bloomberg news agency reported on Tuesday.
Citing an unnamed person close to the matter, Bloomberg said Sewing could remove James von Moltke as CFO.
Separately, Germany business monthly Manager Magazin reported that Sewing was also discussing the possibility of replacing Garth Ritchie as head of investment banking to make the planned restructuring of the division a top priority.
Deutsche Bank declined to comment.
Shares in Deutsche Bank rose 2.7 percent on the news and traded 3.5% higher at 1411 GMT.
In May, Sewing promised shareholders "tough cutbacks" at its underperforming investment bank, a major source of revenue for Germany's largest lender, which has struggled to generate sustainable profits since the 2008 financial crisis.
Sewing is expected to announce changes in July, according to sources. The bank reports second-quarter earnings on July 24.
On Monday, a source close to the matter said Deutsche Bank is planning to overhaul its trading operations by creating a so-called bad bank to hold tens of billions of euros of non-core assets.
Deutsche Bank also plans to dramatically reduce the size of its U.S. equities business, leaving only a skeleton operation in place to service corporate and high-net-worth clients, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.
(Reporting by Andreas Framke, writing by Emma Thomasson; Editing by Keith Weir)
By Jenny Strasburg
Updated June 18, 2019 2:52 pm ET
Two of Deutsche Bank AG’s DB 3.81% top New York deal makers are poised to leave the embattled lender ahead of impending deep cuts to its Wall Street investment bank, according to people familiar with the matter.
The veteran bankers, Mark Hantho and John Eydenberg, are in advanced negotiations to join Citigroup Inc., the people said. They would be the most prominent departures from the German lender’s U.S. investment-banking operations this year.
Both bankers have long-established relationships with corporate executives and private-equity firms from years of competing with other banks to run initial public offerings and finance buyouts. Departures of senior bankers can trigger others to leave, amplifying the blow. Such exits are already a risk at Deutsche Bank, where strategy is in flux and questions about senior management won’t die.
ドイツ銀行は米国の株式事業の規模を大幅に縮小し、企業や富裕層の顧客にサービスを提供するためのスケルトン事業のみを残す計画であると、この件に詳しい3人の関係者がロイターに語った。
For over a decade, one of the biggest financial scandals in German history has been snaking its way through Deutsche Bank
7000兆円の価値相当ブツのは実体を持たない火遊びか火焙りか。
Deutsche Bank’s Top Executives Embroiled in German Tax Scandal
Karin Matussek
For over a decade, one of the biggest financial scandals in German history has been snaking its way through Deutsche Bank AG.
Now, it’s approaching the highest levels of the German lender, with three key figures -- investment banking chief Garth Ritchie, former co-Chief Executive Officer Anshu Jain and his predecessor Josef Ackermann -- among 80 suspects linked to the bank and being probed by prosecutors in the so-called Cum-Ex affair, according to people familiar with the matter. For CEO Christian Sewing, who’s trying to turn the tide at Germany’s biggest bank after years of painful missteps, the escalation couldn’t come at a more precarious time.
Deutsche Bank AG Annual General Meeting
Photographer: Alex Kraus/Bloomberg
Deutsche Bank is just one of many firms tied to the scandal, and the company maintains it didn’t act as a buyer or seller in the Cum-Ex deals. But the German lender profited from servicing customers that specialized in such transactions, according to people familiar with a German criminal investigation and an internal review seen by Bloomberg.
The finance giant had Cum-Ex clients who were loaned as much as 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion). During the height of the activity from 2008 to 2011, the bank took on clients who did nothing but such deals. A German probe found that Deutsche Bank even had a profit-sharing agreement with one firm that specialized in the transactions, according to people familiar with the findings. Among key figures involved in Cum-Ex work at Deutsche Bank, the people said, were Simon Pearson and Joe Penna, former managers who left the bank in 2009.
Deutsche Bank’s Ritchie, Ex-CEO Jain Ensnared in Widening Probe
Key Speakers at the Bloomberg Markets Most Influential Summit
Photographer: Jason Alden/Bloomberg
Deutsche Bank said that it never “participated in an organized Cum-Ex market, neither as a short seller nor as a Cum-Ex buyer.” It acknowledges that “as a major participant in the capital markets, Deutsche Bank was involved in Cum-Ex transactions of its clients” and said it is cooperating with the authorities.
“I was not personally involved in any Cum-Ex activity, and I am very confident that the investigation will show no personal wrongdoing by me,” Ritchie said in an email sent by the bank.
Refund Claims
The controversial transactions -- widely reported to have cost German taxpayers more than 10 billion euros -- involved the sale of borrowed shares just before a company was due to pay a dividend. They allowed multiple investors to claim a refund on a dividend tax that was paid only once, according to German authorities. The practice was named after the Latin term cum/ex, meaning with/without, because the stocks were sold with and delivered without a dividend payment.
Numerous probes are ongoing. On Monday, Frankfurt prosecutors raided residential and business locations in an investigation unrelated to Deutsche Bank.
More: The Tax Dodge That Cost the German Treasury Billions of Euros
Key Speakers At Sueddeutsche Zeitung Economic Summit
Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg
Deutsche Bank profited by lending money to buyers and shares to short sellers in the transactions, said the people, asking not to be identified because the probe isn’t public. The company also acted as a custodian and issued tax certificates needed for the deals, they said.
In 2008, Pearson was a managing director and Penna a director in Deutsche Bank’s London-based prime finance unit, according to an investigation the bank commissioned by Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP into its dealings with Nummus Financial GmbH. The law firm’s report, delivered in 2013 and seen by Bloomberg News, describes how Pearson brought on Nummus as a new client. Nummus specialized in Cum-Ex deals, and the men would have known the nature of its work because of the material they reviewed, according to the report.
Nummus went through a customer acceptance procedure, with Deutsche Bank’s legal department reviewing the contracts and the credit risk management unit conducting due diligence, including a review of “the business model and the trading strategy,” according to the report. The bank granted the new client a credit rating, and as part of its prime brokerage arrangement, provided 15- to 20-fold leverage on the fund’s capital of 32.7 million euros, the report said.
For the Freshfields review, Deutsche Bank had given the lawyers emails and messenger traffic of seven people working for the lender in London, including that of Ritchie, Pearson and Penna. Ritchie’s emails were searched for the terms "Nummus" and "GmbH" and were also filtered for emails sent by or addressed to Pearson, according to the report. The lawyers didn’t specify what individual results they got. The memo cites Ritchie’s job description at the time as "Managing Director, Management -- Europe".
Deutsche Bank AG's Slump Deepens
Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg
Ballance Connection
Authorities grew suspicious and refused to pay Nummus any tax refunds, according to a public filing. Last year, Deutsche Bank settled a probe by Frankfurt prosecutors into the Nummus work for 4 million euros. Cologne prosecutors are still probing the bank’s activities related to other investors and declined to comment.
Pearson and Penna left Deutsche Bank in 2009 to join Ballance Group, an asset management company that advised funds and other market participants who engaged in Cum-Ex transactions. The men’s work and Ballance’s role are described in detail in an indictment Cologne prosecutors filed in April against two former London bankers who worked at Ballance, according to the people.
On Monday, a court in Bonn said it had received the indictment, saying it covers 34 cases of aggravated tax evasion allegedly leading to losses of more than 440 million euros, but didn’t provide more details. The two bankers have helped uncover the role of others involved, people familiar with the probe said in January. The pair, didn’t work at Deutsche Bank, was with UniCredit’s HVB unit before moving to Ballance.
A German lawyer for Pearson declined to comment. Attempts to reach Penna were unsuccessful. Some Ballance units were dissolved. Others, which were renamed, don’t have listed phone numbers.
Close Ties
Deutsche Bank acted as the prime broker for several Cum-Ex investors who were Ballance clients, according to the probe’s findings. It granted one fund a loan of 942 million euros for the trades; another, 743 million euros. Deutsche Bank also had a profit-sharing agreement with Ballance in 2009 and 2010 under which it received 30% to 50% of the money the asset manager made, according to people familiar with the findings of the Cologne probe.
After Penna and Pearson joined Ballance, Pearson maintained close ties with his former employer. Ballance Overseas Management Ltd., a London-based entity where he was a director, became a client of Deutsche Bank’s prime brokerage in February 2010 and had borrowed about 404 million euros within months, U.K. filings show. The company traded only with Deutsche Bank and other Ballance Group companies, according to a Ballance report for the year ended October 2010.
Ballance also hired several other Deutsche Bank employees to work on the Cum-Ex deals. Some of the company’s units organized shares used by short sellers, cooperating with staff remaining at Deutsche Bank who are also being investigated, according to the people.
German authorities say that dozens of banks and brokerages in London and other global financial hubs helped investors siphon off billions of euros from the national treasury with the transactions over the course of a decade. A 2012 reform of the tax code stopped the practice, and the current debate centers on whether the trades were legal before that. Prosecutors have been conducting a criminal probe into some of the biggest names in European and U.S. finance, looking at the roles played by banks, law firms and others.
In a separate probe conducted by prosecutors in Frankfurt, law firm Freshfield’s offices were raided last week. The search, on Thursday, was related to previous work done for clients, the firm said in an emailed statement on Monday, adding that it was confident that the advice provided was legally sound. It’s the third raid of the Frankfurt offices of the firm over Cum-Ex. Two lawyers of the firm have become targets in the probe.
(Updates with Freshfields raid in last paragraph.)
中共シナ迫ってきた地方金融破綻の連鎖イメージを必死で消して歩く国有化当事者は命がけであろう。
《人民銀行（中央銀行）は２日、さらなる公的管理は計画していないと表明したものの、アナリストによると包商銀に対する措置は今後中小銀行の再編につながる動きだ。ナティクシスのチーフエコノミスト、アリシア・ガルシア・エレロ氏は、包商銀の接収に触れて「当局は再編を現実的なオプションとして検討し始めるだろう。これはその引き金だ」と指摘し、かつてのリーマン・ブラザーズ破綻の小型版になぞらえた。》
《ブランシャール氏は朝日新聞の取材に応じ、安倍政権が10月に予定する消費増税に反対する姿勢を示した。「消費増税を実施すれば不況になるかもしれない一方、債務残高の国内総生産（GDP）に対する比率は大して改善しない。日本銀行の金融政策ももう使えない」と指摘。》
