(October 23) – “Deutsche Bank AG, which six months ago tried to sell its retail business to concentrate on corporate and investment banking, is working on a plan to turn its retail unit into a pan-European outlet for stocks, mutual funds and other investment products,” writes Marcus Walker in today’s Wall Street Journal.

“Top executives of Deutsche Bank, the world’s largest bank by assets, are to present their latest ideas to their supervisory board Monday. The board, the equivalent of a board of directors at U.S. companies, earlier this year said it wanted to weigh the management proposals before big steps were taken.”

“The new thinking is driven by the bank’s powerful investment-banking division, known as Global Corporates & Institutions, or GCI, which sees the retail network as a distribution channel to the growing class of affluent Europeans who are switching their savings into stocks and investment funds.”

“Presentations at Monday’s board meeting are set to flesh out an idea announced in August to relaunch the German retail business, called Deutsche Bank 24, on a pan-European scale. At the time, Deutsche Bank’s chief executive officer, Rolf Breuer, spoke of creating ‘connectivity’ between investment banking and ‘the modern middle class.’ “

“The supervisory board had earlier told Mr. Breuer to rethink his previous plan to sell a majority stake in Deutsche Bank 24. The bank’s top investment bankers, including Josef Ackermann and Edson Mitchell, now support retaining the retail business and hope to focus its efforts on selling investment products, rather than traditional banking services. Mr. Ackermann will succeed Mr. Breuer in 2002. His growing power was clear to insiders at a meeting in a Paris hotel in September, where he debated executives from various divisions on how their businesses could cooperate more fruitfully with GCI — apparently now the heart of the company, and certainly the heart of its profits.”

“Deutsche Bank’s asset-management division, led by former investment banker Michael Philipp, is also pushing the retail revamping to boost the sales of fund-management unit DWS, Europe’s biggest mutual-fund company.”

“Plans for improved distribution aren’t confined to Deutsche Bank 24. The group’s private-banking unit, which serves high net-worth clients, is also due for aggressive expansion as a European sales channel for the GCI and asset-management units. In the U.S., too, Deutsche Bank hopes to win retail customers, a strategy that it furthered by making a bid for National Discount Brokers Group Inc. earlier this month.”