????曾經利潤豐厚的傳統證券交易業務現今正褪去迷人的光環。不信？看看德意志銀行的最新消息就清楚了。

????6月7日，這家德國最大的銀行宣布，該公司聯席首席執行官安舒?賈因和于爾根?菲辰將辭職。新任首席執行官為銀行監事會成員、曾在競爭對手瑞銀任過首席財務官的約翰?克萊恩（菲辰將于明年5月離職，從技術角度而言，在此之前他與克萊恩二人將共同擔任首席執行官）。

????值得注意的是，雖然德意志銀行的領導層將換血，但該公司董事會打算沿用之前已經失敗的基本戰略，鞏固甚至加碼投資銀行業務，該業務是德意志銀行的主要支柱，也是新CEO克萊恩最擅長的領域。而在投資銀行業務中，德意志銀行重點投資的是一個早已跟不上現代化腳步的過時領域：固定收益交易。

????2012年，聯席首席執行官賈因和菲辰受命接替傳奇式人物約瑟夫?阿克曼，兩人制定了雄心勃勃的財務目標，但最終所有主要目標都落空了，實際懸殊甚遠。今年4月，二人宣布進行戰略調整，將各項目標大大下調。在5月舉行的德意志銀行年會上，投資者對上述計劃深表失望。在一次不具約束力的投票中，只有61％的股東贊成上述計劃，這顯然促使了董事會采取行動。

????德意志銀行長期業績不佳主要有兩個原因。首先，自金融危機結束以來，一系列的罰款、和解以及重組已經給這家銀行帶來了數十億歐元的負擔。這些費用遠遠超出該行領導層、分析師乃至所有人的預期。過去三年里，德意志銀行共花了約90億美元，以就操縱倫敦銀行間同業拆借利率（Libor）的調查以及多樁訴訟案達成和解，這些訴訟案涉及該行承銷抵押貸款支持證券，以及在2002年媒體巨頭基爾希公司破產中所扮演的角色。德意志銀行還拋掉了有問題的商業房地產貸款投資組合，上述問題資產來自它2008年收購的一家國有銀行Postbank。

????同時，巴塞爾協議III的資本新規引發了額外的虧損。由于新規強制要求銀行為波動性強的互換合約以及各類衍生品合約預留大量準備金，這些原本盈利的合約轉而出現虧損。這迫使德意志銀行虧本甩賣衍生品投資組合。

????在2008年后重建的金融秩序中，大多數大型銀行都經歷了類似的陣痛。但是，假如德意志銀行基礎運營業務業績良好，賈因和菲辰也不至于如此狼狽。事實恰恰相反，該行基礎業務表現不佳，大大低于預期。2012年，兩位聯席CEO宣布了2015年要達到的3項目標：一是承諾資產負債表上“賬面凈資產”回報率達到12％；二是承諾使運營成本與收入之比達到65％的驕人水平；三是在不募集新資的前提下，使監管資本比例在3年窗口期結束時升高到10％。

????德意志銀行4月份的凈資產收益率數字非常難看，賈因和菲辰不得不大幅下調這一目標。新設定的目標是有形資產凈資產收益率達到10％，這一目標相對較低，因為它排除了商業信譽。有形資產凈資產收益率10％的新目標，相當于賬面凈資產收益率8％，也就是說比之前的目標降低了4個百分點。更令股東憤怒的是，二人不僅將目標大幅降低，還將實現目標的期限推遲了5年，延長至2020年。到目前為止，尚未見到任何進展。2014年，德意志銀行公布的凈資產收益率為2.3％。盛富證券駐法蘭克福分析師德克?貝克爾表示：“該銀行2015年的凈資產收益率很可能也是較小的個位數。”至于說第二個目標，德意志銀行的運營成本與收入之比目前沒有達到計劃的60％左右，而是高達80%左右。

????賈因和菲辰確實實現了資本比率10％的目標，但他們還是失敗了，因為為了達到上述比率，德意志銀行募集了約130億美元的新股本，這稀釋了股東權益，股東們因此紛紛拋售該銀行股票。2007年以來，德意志銀行的股價已經由每股150美元降至每股33美元，市值縮水了1000億美元。

????投資銀行業務業績不佳，而且人們日益懷疑業績短時間內不會改善，這使得德意志銀行當前的戰略遭到嚴重質疑。

????If any doubt lingers that traditional securities trading has faded from a fabulously profitable, glamorous enterprise to a shadow of its former self, the latest news from Deutsche Bank makes this new reality all too clear.

????On June 7, Germany’s largest lender announced that its co-CEOs, Anshu Jain and Jurgen Fitschen, would resign from their posts. The new CEO (who technically will share the job with Fitschen until he departs next May) will be John Cryan, a member of the Deutsche Bank supervisory board and former CFO of rival UBS.

????What’s remarkable about the shift is that while Deutsche Bank’s leadership will change, the board intends to follow the same basic strategy that failed under the previous regime: bolstering, one might even say doubling down, on investment banking, its primary pillar and Cryan’s area of expertise. Within investment banking, deutsche is wagering heavily on an antiquated area where modernization isn’t its friend: fixed income trading.

????Appointed in 2012 to succeed the legendary Josef Ackermann, co-CEOs Jain and Fitschen set ambitious financial goals, and missed all of the big ones by a spectacular margin. In April, the duo unveiled a strategic overhaul with significantly reduced goals. At Deutsche Bank’s annual meeting in May, investors expressed deep disappointment with the plan; only 61% of shareholders endorsed it in a non-binding vote, which clearly shocked the board into action.

????Two main factors account for Deutsche Bank’s chronically poor results. First, since the end of the financial crisis, a series of fines, settlements, and restructurings have inflicted billions upon billions of euros in charges on the bank. Those charges were far bigger than the bank’s leaders, analysts, or almost anyone else expected. In the past three years, the bank has paid a total of around $9 billion to settle a Libor-rigging action and lawsuits over its underwriting of mortgage-backed securities, as well as its role in the collapse of the Kirch media empire in 2002. It also dumped troubled portfolios of commercial real estate loans inherited in the acquisition of government-owned lender Postbank in 2008.

????The new Basel III capital rules triggered additional losses. Once profitable swaps and assorted derivatives contracts sprung losses when new rules mandated that banks back those volatile contracts with heavy reserves. The tighter regulations forced Deutsche Bank to sell derivatives portfolios at heavy losses.

????Similar travails afflicted most big banks in the post-2008 financial order. But Jain and Fitschen wouldn’t have whiffed so badly if Deutsche Bank’s basic operating businesses had posted strong results. Instead, they performed poorly, exploding the forecasts. In 2012, the co-CEOs announced three goals for 2015. First, they promised to achieve a 12% return on “book equity,” as stated on the balance sheet. Second, Jain and Fitschen pledged to reach an impressive ratio of operating costs to revenues of 65%. The third target: Hiking its regulatory capital level to 10% by the end of the three-year window, without raising any new capital.

????As for return on equity, Deutsche Bank was faring so poorly in April that the co-CEOs lowered the goal in a big way. The new target is 10% on tangible equity, a lower number since it excludes goodwill. It’s the equivalent of 8% on book equity, four points below the previous bogey. Further infuriating shareholders, they pushed back the deadline to achieve this easier target by five years, to 2020. So far, progress is nowhere in sight. In 2014, Deutsche Bank posted a return on equity of 2.3%. “It will probably be in the low-single digits for 2015 as well,” says Dirk Becker, an analyst with Kepler Cheuvreux in Frankfurt. On the second objective, the expense ratio is now running not in the 60% range as planned, but in the 80s.

????The duo did achieve a capital ratio of 10%. But they flopped again, since getting there required raising around $13 billion in new equity capital, diluting shareholders, who’ve fled the stock. Since 2007, Deutsche Bank’s share price has dropped from $150 to $33, erasing $100 billion in market value.

????The poor performance of investment banking, and growing doubts that this will change any time soon, most seriously calls the bank’s current strategy into question.