David Enrich

Deutsche Bank has loaned Donald Trump a lot of money. Some of it was unsecured. Some with his “personal guarantee.” Given that no major U.S. bank would be eager to loan Trump or members of his family money that gives the reader some idea of the judgement and decision making at Deutsche Bank.

As I was reading of the corruption, bad judgements, poor management and greed at the Bank, I wondered how it has survived. Their technology and banking systems were described as antiquated. Employees were using Lotus Notes and Excel spreadsheets to track data. Sounds like one could not trust the accuracy of the financial reports of the corporation.

So many suicides, divorces, drugs and aberrant behavior by executives of the bank! The author has detailed the “behind the scenes” behaviors at the bank.

If you are a shareholder of the bank, this book is a horror story. Very well written. Entertaining.

… (mere)

Although the title references Donald Trump, his relationship with Deutsche Bank is not the main element in this story of the bank's rise and fall. It's primarily structured around the tale of one of its executives, Bill Broeksmit, whose 2014 suicide ultimately helped expose much of the bank's malfeasance.

It's briskly written and doesn't get caught up in technical details of derivatives, credit-default swaps, and the Libor. Instead, Enrich structures the book around personalities: Broeksmit; his Merrill Lynch colleague and friend Edson Mitchell, who helped build the trading section of DB; Anshu Jain, a colleague and later DB's chair; Josef Ackermann, who became the leading figure (then CEO) at DB and pushed the bank into increasingly risky practices. His demand for short term profit above all else drove traders into creative strategies to hide debt.

Trump's story, meanwhile, is partly largely known: he managed to get Deutsche Bank to loan him money when no one else would, even after he defaulted on loans with them. And in return, when he was elected, investigations into their behavior went away. There's also a hint that the Trump/Kushner connections with the Kennedy family (Justice Kennedy's son Justin worked for Deutsche Bank) may have played a part in the justice's decision to retire, though this is not explicitly stated.

This book will not give you confidence in bank governance, our own watchdogs, or the finance industry.… (mere)