Deutsche Bank

Deutsche Bank AG (literally "German Bank") is an international bank with headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany. The bank employs more than 80,000 people in 70 countries, and has a large presence in Europe, the Americas, Asia Pacific and the emerging markets.

Deutsche Bank has offices in major financial centers including London, New York City, Singapore, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Paris, Moscow, Sydney, Toronto, Istanbul, Madrid, Dublin, Amsterdam, Warsaw, Mumbai, Kuala Lumpur, São Paulo, Dubai, Riyadh, Bangkok, Karachi, Belgrade, Manila and George Town (Cayman Islands).

The bank offers financial products and services for corporate and institutional clients along with private and business clients. Services include sales, trading, and origination of debt and equity; mergers and acquisitions (M&A); risk management products, such as derivatives, corporate finance, wealth management, retail banking, fund management, and transaction banking.

Deutsche bank claims to champion responsible lending and states on its website "Deutsche Bank’s commitment to communities in the Americas is grounded in a long-standing tradition of social responsibility."

Ties to Pete Peterson's "Fix the Debt"
The Campaign to Fix the Debt is the latest incarnation of a decades-long effort by former Nixon man turned Wall Street billionaire Pete Peterson to slash earned benefit programs such as Social Security and Medicare under the guise of fixing the nation's "debt problem."

This article is part of the Center for Media and Democracy's investigation of Pete Peterson's Campaign to "Fix the Debt." Please visit our main SourceWatch page on Fix the Debt.

Coal financing
In November 2011, Deutsche Bank was listed as the top global financier of coal-fired power plants in a report complied by various environmental groups entitled, Bankrolling Climate Change: A Look into the Portfolios of the World's Largest Banks. The report noted that Deutsche Bank spent $5,962 million euros on coal plants around the world since 2005.

Action on climate change
Deutsche Asset Management, the asset management arm of Deutsche Bank AG, describes itself as having "identified climate change as one of the mega-trends that would drive the global asset management business for the next generation and beyond. We saw that the rapidly growing level of carbon in the atmosphere meant that the world had to take action now, and that this would require massive capital investment over several decades. That in turn would produce exciting new investment opportunities from which our clients could benefit."

Its 2010 report Climate Change: Addressing the Major Skeptic Arguments is an overview of climate science by researchers at Columbia University. The report paper's "clear conclusion is that the primary claims of the skeptics do not undermine the assertion that human-made climate change is already happening and is a serious long term threat. Indeed, the recent publication on the State of the Climate by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), analyzing over thirty indicators, or climate variables, concludes that the Earth is warming and that the past decade was the warmest on record. Quantifying cause and effect or projecting future conditions is always incomplete in a system as complex as Earth's climate, where multiple factors impact the observations. Conclusions are thus presented in terms of probabilities rather than dead certainties. This uncertainty is not always adequately explained in the public debate and, when discussed, can appear to be a challenge to the credibility of the field. However, uncertainty is an inevitable component in our understanding of any system for which perfect knowledge is unattainable, be it markets or climate." Deutsche Asset Management concludes: "To us, the most persuasive argument in support of climate change is that the basic laws of physics dictate that increasing carbon dioxide levels in the earth's atmosphere produce warming. (This will be the case irrespective of other climate events.) The only way that warming can be mitigated by natural processes is if there are countervailing 'feedback mechanisms', such as cooling from increased cloud cover caused by the changing climate. A key finding of the current research is that there has so far been no evidence of such countervailing factors. In fact, most observed and anticipated feedback mechanisms are actually working to amplify the warming process, not reduce it." And: "Simply put, the science shows us that climate change due to emissions of greenhouse gases is a serious problem. Furthermore, due to the persistence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the lag in response of the climate system, there is a very high probability that we are already heading towards a future where warming will persist for thousands of years. Failing to insure against that high probability does not seem a gamble worth taking."

Management Board

 * Jurgen Fitschen, Co-Chairman
 * Anshu Jain, Co-Chairman
 * Stefan Krause, Chief Financial Officer
 * Stephan Leithner, Chief Executive Officer Europe (except Germany and UK), Human Resources, Legal & Compliance, Government & Regulatory Affairs
 * Stuart Lewis, Chief Risk Officer
 * Rainer Neske, Head of Private & Business Clients
 * Henry Ritchotte, Chief Operating Officer

Featured SourceWatch Articles on Fix the Debt

 * Fix the Debt Portal Page
 * Fix the Debt's Leadership
 * Fix the Debt's Partner Groups
 * Fix the Debt's State Chapters
 * Fix the Debt's Lobbyists
 * Fix the Debt's Parent Group
 * Fix the Debt's Corporations
 * Pete Peterson
 * Peter G. Peterson Foundation
 * America Speaks
 * Simpson-Bowles Commission
 * Erskine Bowles
 * Alan Simpson
 * Social Security
 * Medicare
 * Medicaid

External resources
"DB Climate Change Advisors Website"