Late last week, Germany's largest bank reported quarterly and full-year financial figures showing that it has come a long way from a tough period almost a decade earlier. The bank has sharply increased margins, revenues and performance in areas including private banking.

Last week, Deutsche Bank reported a fourth-quarter 2025 pre-tax profit of €2.027 billion ($2.39 billion), surging from €583 million a year earlier. On an attributable basis, the figure was €1.298 billion, soaring from €106 million.

Total revenues in Q4 2025 rose 7 per cent, and provisions for credit losses dropped by 6 per cent on the same quarter a year earlier, the Frankfurt-listed bank said. Noninterest costs fell 15 per cent year-on-year to €5.304 billion. For all of 2025, net revenues rose 7 per cent to €32.1 billion, matching Deutsche’s ambitions.

The cost/income ratio was 64 per cent, meeting the bank’s target of holding below 65 per cent and falling from 76 per cent in 2024.

The German bank, one of Europe’s largest, logged net inflows of €78 billion last year, with assets under management in its private bank and asset management arm rising by €124 billion.

At the end of December, the bank’s Common Equity Tier 1 ratio was 14.2 per cent, up from 13.8 per cent at the end of 2024.

Private bank
In 2025, the private bank made a pre-tax profit of €2.3 billion, rising 95 per cent on a year before. Return on tangible equity more than doubled to 10.5 per cent from 5.1 per cent; the cost/income ratio was 70 per cent, narrowing from 78 per cent. Net revenues were €9.7 billion, rising 3 per cent. Assets under management rose €51 billion from the end of 2024, reaching €685 billion and helped by €27 billion of net new money. 

In Q4, net private bank revenues rose 3 per cent  to €2.4 billion on a year before, the bank said.

“2025 was a year of delivery for Deutsche Bank. We hit our RoTE target of above 10 per cent, both group-wide and across all our businesses. We sustained revenue momentum and business growth in line with our ambitions. We maintained cost discipline and used operational efficiencies to self-fund further investments while meeting our cost targets,” James von Moltke, chief financial officer, said. “Capital management enabled us both to strengthen our capital ratio and grow our distributions to shareholders.”