European News

30, Apr 2013.

Deutsche Bank AG (DBK), continental Europe’s biggest bank, is raising as much as 4.8 billion euros ($6.3 billion) in capital, three months after co-Chief Executive Officer Anshu Jain said a share sale wasn’t in investors’ interests.

The company will issue 2.8 billion euros in stock, or as many as 90 million new shares, as part of the plan, the Frankfurt-based bank said in a statement yesterday. Deutsche Bank has already received enough orders for the sale, according to the term sheet.

Jain timed the capital increase to coincide with a report showing first-quarter earnings rose 19 percent, beating estimates. He’s boosting reserves after Standard & Poor’s warned of a possible credit rating downgrade. Jain said in January he was willing to take losses on asset sales rather than issue new stock, citing the level of the share price.

“A capital increase should come and has come,” Andrew Lim, an analyst at Espirito Santo Investment Bank, said by telephone from London. “Our concern is that the capital increase isn’t big enough to fill holes in the balance sheet.”

The new shares, carrying full dividend entitlement for 2012, are being “placed with institutional investors by way of an accelerated book-build offering,” Deutsche Bank said in the statement. It said it may also sell as much as 2 billion euros of subordinated capital instruments over the next 12 months.

Jain said on Jan. 31 a capital increase isn’t in shareholders’ “best interests,” though he declined to rule it out should the regulatory environment become stricter.

The sale of the shares will increase Deutsche Bank’s core Tier 1 capital adequacy ratio under Basel III rules, a key measure of financial strength, to about 9.5 percent from 8.8 percent at the end of March, the lender said.

Shareholder Impact

The value of existing shareholdings will be diluted by as much as 10 percent. Deutsche Bank has about 938 million shares outstanding, according to a report it published today.

“They’re trying to protect shareholders” by going for a “small” dilution, Dirk Becker, an analyst with Kepler Capital Markets who recommends clients buy Deutsche Bank stock, said by phone. “I think the shares will be placed pretty quickly.”

The announcement of the capital increase comes as Deutsche Bank’s shares rose 0.1 percent over the past 12 months compared with a 25 percent increase for the Bloomberg Europe Banks and Financial Services Index. The bank has a price to book ratio of 0.57 compared with 0.83 for the index average.

Deutsche Bank climbed 1.7 percent to 32.90 euros in Frankfurt yesterday.

Rating Review

Concerns about Deutsche Bank’s capital levels prompted Standard & Poor’s (SPY) to place its rating of A+ on review in March, citing the debt crisis, litigation and a plan by the Federal Reserve to order non-U.S. banks to supply capital for their U.S. units.

Deutsche Bank is likely to be most affected by the Fed’s proposal, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) analysts including Jernej Omahen said last month.

Separately, Deutsche Bank said first-quarter net income rose to 1.65 billion euros, exceeding the 1.21 billion-euro average estimate of six analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.

Deutsche Bank set aside 354 million euros against losses from non-performing loans in the quarter. The provisions were expected to total 425 million euros, according to analysts.

The company said pretax profit at its investment banking unit fell 2 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier to 1.85 billion euros. Cost reductions failed to offset a 4 percent decline in revenue to 4.6 billion euros.