“Even by the amoral standards of Wall Street, Deutsche exhibited a jarring lack of interest in its clients' reputations," Enrich writes.
'Dark Towers' Chases Scandal-Ridden Deutsche Bank's Mysterious Ties To Donald Trump
by Jim Zarroli
NPR, February 18, 2020
Excerpt...
It is by now a familiar story. "This proud national icon was seduced by the siren song of Wall Street riches," Enrich writes. Thanks partly to deregulation, big firms such as Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch were coming up with tantalizing new ways to make money, and by 1994 Deutsche Bank wanted a piece of the action.
It started by recruiting Edson Mitchell, an American executive from Merrill, who believed Deutsche Bank's "stubborn Germanness was the main impediment to unleashing its full animal spirits." Mitchell set about building a global markets operation, not at the bank's Frankfurt headquarters but in London, where he could function more independently. He hired a staff of "bloodthirsty piranhas" from Wall Street who knew how to push boundaries, as Enrich's tale tells.
Among them was Bill Broeksmit, a risk management genius who subsequently killed himself as regulators were moving in on the bank and whose death is the mystery Enrich uses to frame the story.
Mitchell died early in a plane crash, but the machinery he built kept chugging along. Enrich tells the story of its rise and fall in the careful style of a good newspaper reporter (he is an editor at The New York Times) but allows the complicated material to unfold like a good novel.
Over time, he writes, Deutsche Bank became less German and more global, so much so that the bank had to post a sign in its London lobby explaining how to say "Deutsche." Too many of the American traders were pronouncing it "douche bank."
Continues...
https://www.npr.org/2020/02/18/806984703/dark-towers-is-a-cautionary-tale-of-pursuing-profits-at-any-cost
Seemed like such nice people, too.
Like IMPOTUS congratulating Anthony Kennedy on his son’s great job at Deutsche Bank then lobbying him to foist Kavanaugh upon the Constitution.
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