Corporate Investments

The Corporate Investments Group Division encompasses our portfolio of industrial holdings (DB Investor), investments in private equity , which include direct investments in private equity and fund and venture capital investments, as well as other corporate investments including real estate owned by the bank. At the end of 2003, the total Group-external assets of Corporate Investments amounted to € 18.2 billion. Of that figure, € 9.9 billion relate to DB Investor, € 2.2 billion to private equity and € 6.1 billion to other corporate investments such as those in Eurohypo AG and Atradius B.V.

Focus on core businesses. Following our decision in 2002 to focus on core activities and scale down our principal exposure to non-strategic financial holdings, we continued to pursue this course consistently in 2003. For example, we divested a substantial part of our private equity portfolio in a management buyout . We further reduced our private equity portfolio through the sale of direct investments and securitized selected fund investments. We also decreased our shareholdings in listed companies and disposed of a number of office and bank buildings in Europe, most of which were used by the bank itself.

Income before income taxes 2003

In 2003, Corporate Investments continued the strategy of winding down investments not needed for our core business. Net revenues in the reporting year included charges arising from other-than-temporary impairments of equity investments, from the divestment of business activities, from the sale of buildings and from the full write-off of our shareholding in Gerling Group. At the same time, in contrast to the previous year, there were hardly any gains from the sale of industrial holdings. The reduction of noninterest expenses by € 0.5 billion to € 0.8 billion enabled us to limit the net loss in Corporate Investments to €1.7 billion.

Corporate Investments¹