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By Thomas Atkins
NEW YORK, March 2 (Reuters) - From its tower on Wall Street,Deutsche Bank enjoys a commanding view of lowerManhattan. Its target is to gain a presence in investmentbanking which is nearly as dominant.
As Germany's largest bank prepares to announce a newstrategy, possibly before the end of this month, it is packingits ranks with Wall Street veterans and preparing to give itsdivision focused on capital markets, trading and advisory aneven bigger role.
Deutsche increased its global market share in 2014 to 4.66percent in the $92 billion market for investment banking fees,placing it ahead of every other European bank and just below theU.S. top five, according to Thomson Reuters data.
That helped it close the global revenue gap with rivals likeJP Morgan and Bank of America Merrill Lynch andput it within striking distance of No. 5-ranked Citigroup.
Deutsche has lapped up business left by European rivals likeBarclays and Credit Suisse, who still havebigger U.S. operations in some fields but who are paring back.
"As many of our competitors retreat from the U.S., we seeopportunities to capture more market share," the bank's NorthAmerican head, Jacques Brand, told Reuters last month.
Deutsche is reviewing its universal banking model that hasit selling everything from home loans in Wuppertal to equityderivatives in New York, to see whether selling parts of thegroup, such as its Postbank retail branch network,would boost returns.
It wants to take on U.S. investment banks on their turf andin February for example poached Jeff Urwin, co-head of globalinvestment banking at JP Morgan.
Deutsche's strength is its global reach across debt andequity markets and other financial services like cash andtransaction management, investors say. It is one of the top twobanks in currency trading. The bank's huge bond franchise helpsas well - Deutsche is No. 4 globally by fees, outpunchingGoldman Sachs.
That gives Deutsche a competitive edge when dealing with bigU.S. clients, said one veteran credit analyst who has coveredthe bank for more than a decade.
One coup was Alibaba's $8 billion bond sale inNovember, which the bank led two months after running its $25billion New York listing, the largest capital raising ever.
HOLDING ITS OWN
The German bank chalked up another series of victories withApple, leading four bond issues since 2013 worth atotal of $39 billion. That relationship harks back to 2010 whenthe bank was mandated to handle back-office transactions forApple's online store, iTunes.
"Deutsche seems to be holding its own, particularly in fixedincome, and actually making a decent job of increasing itsfootprint in the equity business," said analyst Chris Wheeler atresearch specialist Atlantic Equities.
But the road ahead is rocky. The bank has pared businesslines such as U.S. commercial paper or single-name creditdefault swaps. It made no sense to maintain unprofitableactivities in an attempt to be all things to all people, asenior U.S. executive said.
Regulators now impose increasingly stringent capitalrequirements. Deutsche has this year for the first time had tosubmit to stringent stress tests imposed by the Federal Reserve.
The bank has suffered under fines and investigations and in2014 was the target of criticisms from U.S. regulators for"unreliable" financial reports.
The bank hired hundreds of staff to beef up compliance andwill add Steven Reich, a defense lawyer with experience in theWhite House under Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
Tougher capital requirements mean investment banks overallare less able to lure lucrative business with the offer of cheaploans, as many often did in the past.
"Once the investment banks stop taking balance-sheet risks,it becomes a commodity game, and there's not a lot of loyaltyamong customers," said New York hedge fund investor MariaBoyazny, head of MB Global Partners. "Whoever offers the bestterms, that's who you go to".
Despite the tough environment, the bank strengthened itsmarket position in North America in 2014 without increasingstaff and while reducing the size of its U.S. balance sheet.
Detractors say Deutsche is unlikely ever to command the sameU.S. market share as incumbents. But that's not lost onDeutsche's top U.S. executives, who for now are content to closethe gap. "We don't beat ourselves up for not being GoldmanSachs", says one. (Editing by David Holmes)
