Legal costs push Deutsche Bank into red in third quarter

Deutsche Bank, Germany's biggest lender, said Wednesday that litigation and other costs pushed it into the red in the third quarter.
In the period from July to September, the group booked a net loss of 94 million euros ($120 million), compared with a profit of 41 million euros a year earlier, Deutsche Bank said in a statement.
"Net income in this quarter was materially impacted by provisions as we continued to work toward resolution of litigation matters related to legacy issues," the bank's two co-chief executives Juergen Fitschen and Anshu Jain were quoted as saying in the statement.
"We also incurred costs of adapting to new regulation."
Just last week, Deutsche Bank revealed that it had run up litigation costs of 894 million euros in the third quarter, which are not tax deductable.
Deutsche Bank has found itself accused of a long list of wrongdoings in the past, including attempted manipulation of the currency markets, rigging the Libor and Euribor interest rates and doing business with countries subject to US sanctions such as Iran.
Nevertheless, Jain and Fitschen insisted that Deutsche Bank's underlying performance was "solid, with well-balanced earnings contributions and underlying revenue growth across all four core businesses": corporate banking and securities, private and business clients, global transactions, and asset and wealth management.
Net revenues were up 1.5 percent at 7.864 billion euros in the July-September period and operating profit amounted to 266 million euros, compared with just 18 million euros a year earlier.