Icon: enlarge
Banking district in Frankfurt am Main: Loans will fail in rows
Photo: Arne Dedert / DPA
2020 was almost bizarre for Germany's banks: finally a crisis that didn't grow on its crap.
State financial injections were quickly passed through to ailing companies, accompanied by patriotic pathos and the comforting certainty of being able to prove themselves as a helper in need.
For Deutsche Bank in particular, it was one of the rare years in which it did not have to announce a change of boss or strategy;
even their shares are listed higher today than at the beginning of 2020. The year was more turbulent for Commerzbank.
After a shareholder revolt that was tacitly tolerated by the federal government, she had to throw her board and supervisory board boss out.
It will not continue like this in 2021.
The new management staff at Commerzbank will launch a tough austerity program and lay off thousands of employees;
Hardly anyone believes that everything will be better afterwards - if costs go down, income and thus profits are mostly lost.
Deutsche Bank, which is also foreseeable, is likely to miss its business goals if another miracle does not happen in investment banking, which is more than ever the most important division.
Year of the Bad Banks?
Above all, however, there is a problem that savings banks and Volksbanks are also preparing for: loan defaults that spoil profit, if any, and consume equity.
Nobody believes that the pandemic and the recession of the century will have no consequences for the credit books.
So far, German credit institutions have taken little precaution in the event of massive corporate bankruptcies and loan defaults.
But both will come.
But then at the latest the economic crisis could turn into a financial crisis.
At the European level, there is already whispering about the comeback of state bad banks - balance sheet trash cans in which the bank can scrap bad loans.
In the year of the general election, this could drive taxpayers on the palm again.
Icon: The mirror
