Deutsche Bank announces €1.5bn in Q1 litigation costs

Deutsche Bank announced Wednesday that its first-quarter results would be hit by litigation costs of around 1.5 billion euros ($1.6 billion) but assured it would still turn a profit.

Deutsche Bank "expects to report litigation costs of approximately EUR 1.5 billion for the first quarter 2015," the bank said in a statement.

"Despite these costs Deutsche Bank will be profitable in the first quarter and will report near record revenues," added the statement, which gave no information about the legal disputes giving rise to the charges.

The announcement follows reports that Deutsche Bank is poised to settle a case with US authorities investigating alleged attempts to fix the Libor benchmark interest rate.

The settlement would see Deutsche Bank pay a fine of over $1.5 billion and its British subsidiary, Deutsche Bank Group Services, plead guilty, Bloomberg News reported on April 10.

Deutsche Bank and other banks, including Switzerland's UBS, the Royal Bank of Scotland and JPMorgan in the United States have already been hit with heavy fines by the European Commission for allegedly rigging the London InterBank Offered Rate, which is used to peg millions of interest rate-sensitive contracts and loans around the world.

Deutsche Bank was fined 725 millions euros for its role in the affair, which came to light in 2012.