Germany’s biggest lender, Deutsche Bank, has reported a profit for the first quarter of the year. The positive result surprised many analysts and indicated the bank was recovering from its huge loss in 2015.
Deutsche reported Thursday it booked a net profit of 236 million euros ($268) for the first quarter of 2016. This came as a big surprise to analysts polled by Reuters who had predicted a quarterly loss of 300 million euros for Germany’s biggest bank.
Deutsche Bank said it had been able to cushion the impact of recent turmoil on financial markets.
While the lender is now back in the black, the Q1 bottom-line figure marked a 58-percent drop year-on-year.
Back to normal?
Operating profit fell by 22 percent to 8.1 billion euros mainly because of weak investment banking performance, but Deutsche was able to offset the drop by lowering its overall costs and drastically reducing the amount of money set aside for litigation costs.
Executives around the bank’s new CEO, John Cryan, had declared 2016 to be a year of transition as a large restructuring effort takes shape.
Last year, the lender logged a loss of 6.8 billion euros, marking the biggest annual loss in its history as it kept reeling from the aftermath of a series of scandals it was involved in.
