A message from Christian Sewing on Q2 results 2025

Dear Colleagues,

In recent quarters, I have repeatedly emphasised how important 2025 is for our bank. It is the last year of our current strategy, and we will be judged on its results. At the same time, it is important to lay a strong foundation for our future.

After the first half of the year, we are well on our way to achieving just that. We increased our revenues by 6 percent year on year to 16.3 billion euros and, as planned, significantly reduced costs. Pre-tax profit more than doubled to 5.3 billion euros in the same period and, if we exclude the negative one-off effects from last year’s Postbank proceedings, the figure is still up by more than a third. A CET 1 capital ratio of 14.2 percent rounds off the positive picture. It shows that we are not only growing profitably but are also very robustly positioned.

The importance of this strength has been underlined in recent months. The geopolitical situation remains tense, as the escalation in the Middle East conflict has recently shown. The economic environment is also challenging. The discussions about tariffs and global trade relations are unsettling markets worldwide.

Right now, our clients need a reliable partner, someone who understands complexity, sees the big picture and offers the right solutions to respond to rapidly changing conditions, at home and abroad. This is exactly what we stand for as the Global Hausbank and we see how much our clients appreciate this across the entire organisation.

Our divisional performance reflects this, too. The Corporate Bank, the Investment Bank, the Private Bank and Asset Management all reported double-digit profit growth, not just in this quarter but for the first half of the year. What is even more encouraging is that all four businesses also achieved a return on tangible equity (RoTE) of around 10 percent or more.

For the 2025 financial year, our bank-wide target is an RoTE above 10 percent. We reached this in the first quarter and, despite increased volatility and uncertainty, once again in the second quarter. This means that after six months and at 11 percent, we are right on track to achieve our annual target. The same applies to our revenues and cost ambitions. This gives us great confidence for the months ahead. And the most important reason for our optimism is you: your dedication, your focus and your discipline are the key to our success. If we maintain all this, we can reach the next milestone at the end of the year.

We have much more potential, though. New opportunities are opening for us, especially in the current environment. As a result of global shifts, we are seeing a growing interest in Germany and Europe among our clients. With our strong position in our home market, we are ideally placed to build bridges for companies and investors. At the same time, every day we are all experiencing the possibilities that innovative technologies such as artificial intelligence offer – possibilities we want to make targeted use of in future.

To do all this, we must continue to develop, set ourselves new goals and position ourselves in such a way that we can achieve them. We are currently working on our strategy for the period beyond 2025. We want to become even more focused, efficient and powerful – and further strengthen cooperation across all areas. We want to create an environment in which we are guided by responsibility, team spirit and initiative-taking.

Once again, a big thank you to all of you. Your commitment in the first half of the year was extraordinary. Your hard work not only made these strong figures possible; you have demonstrated what makes our bank stand out: stability, reliability and the determination to move forward together with our clients. We can be proud of that.

Christian