Deutsche Bank Posts Near-Record Profit, Plans Share Buybacks Amid Postbank Probe
Deutsche Bank surprised markets with a near-19-year record profit in Q2 2026, driven by a 60% surge in its investment banking division. Pre-tax profit reached 2.68 billion euros, just shy of the 2007 record, while net profit rose 10% year-on-year to 1.64 billion euros. The bank announced plans to invest 500 million euros in share buybacks in the second half of the year and reaffirmed its 2028 return on equity target of over 13%, currently at 11%. CEO Christian Sewing highlighted artificial intelligence as a new opportunity for growth and cost savings. However, the positive results were overshadowed by news that prosecutors searched Deutsche Bank's Frankfurt headquarters last week as part of an investigation into allegedly illegal cum-cum stock transactions from the Postbank era. The probe targets board member Marcus Chromik, who held leadership roles at Postbank and joined Deutsche Bank's board in 2025.
Editorial responsibility
- No named human review is recorded for this page.
- Reports are grouped by semantic similarity and deterministic rules. Language models may assist titles, summaries, translation and cross-source analysis; the page itself is projected from evidence records.
- Current automated evidence projection