Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft
Q3 2013 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 29 Oct 2013

[Operator:]

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Third Quarter 2013 Analyst Conference Call of Deutsche Bank. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. John Andrews, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

[John Andrews:]

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everybody. This is John Andrews, Head of Investor Relations of Deutsche Bank. I'd like to welcome you to our quarterly earnings call this morning. With me is Anshu Jain, Co-CEO; and Stefan Krause, our Chief Financial Officer. And we would like to thank you very much for your attendance this morning. Without further ado, I'd like to turn it over to Anshu who will have a few opening remarks, followed by Stefan who will take you through the earnings presentation which is available on our website. Anshu?

[Anshuman Jain:]

Thank you, John, and good morning, everyone. This call marks 4 quarters since we launched Strategy 2015+. We're working systematically to deliver on the promises we made. We are well into our journey, and we passed an important milestone. In the third quarter, we can report significant progress, but we also met numerous challenges. Let me start with the challenges. Market conditions were tougher during the quarter in contrast to a year ago, and market gained momentum from the ECB's decisive support for the euro. In this quarter, client activity and markets were negatively impacted by prospects of a withdrawal of quantitative easing and other stimulative policies. Litigation issues came to the foreground for the industry and for us. We took litigation charges of EUR 1.2 billion in the quarter, increasing our reserve to EUR 4.1 billion relating to several matters both in Europe and the U.S. This contributed to a lower quarterly result. In some of these matters, we are cooperating the resettlement in the near future. However, in others, we will defend ourselves vigorously. Our Common Equity Tier 1 capital ratio fell from 10% to 9.7% in the quarter, reflecting litigation reserves and several other factors. In a moment, Stefan will take you through [indiscernible]. As we've said previously, we may see more volatility in this ratio in the coming quarters as we respond to a developing regulatory environment and work through our strategic agenda. Notwithstanding this, we remain highly confident of maintaining the capital standards we've committed to. Now let me turn from challenges to some of our achievements, which include leverage. In July, we communicated our aim to reduce CRD4 exposure by EUR 250 billion by the end of 2015. In the third quarter alone, we achieved reductions of EUR 64 billion. That's on top of EUR 200 billion of reductions we achieved in the 12 months from June 2012 to June this year. Our leverage ratio already meets the European standard of 3%. However, we aim to build a substantial buffer above that level. Given our momentum, we are confident we can achieve that without compromising either our business model or, more importantly our delivery to clients. Furthermore, we sustained progress on cost. Our Operational Excellence program is on cost. Cumulative savings reached EUR 1.5 billion by the end of the quarter, close to our year-end target of EUR 1.6 billion. To be clear, in parallel to Operational Excellence, we're also investing significantly in infrastructure. Over the course of Strategy 2015+, we will invest a total of approximately EUR 1 billion in a portfolio of around 150 initiatives to address the implications of a changing regulatory environment. Roughly EUR 300 million of that investment will be complete by the end of the year. In addition, out of a total of EUR 4 billion of investment related to Operational Excellence, approximately EUR 2.7 billion will be invested in platform improvements designed to further strengthen our control environment. Let me now turn to our business. Core Bank profitability was solid even after litigation charges. In CB&S, revenues in debt sales and trading were significantly below the prior year quarter, but our performance in equity and corporate finance was resilient. Our investment banking franchise remained strong. In Deutsche Asset & Wealth Management, we delivered one of our strongest ever quarters on stable revenues and cost synergies from our integrated platform. We aspire to be a world-leading franchise in this business. We still have much work to do but we're confident that we'll deliver. In GTB, profits were solid, thanks to stable revenues, growing volumes, cost efficiencies and tight risk management. In PBC, revenues were lower against a backdrop of low interest rates and a tough environment for investment products. However, we're building a unique integrated retail business with a dedicated offering for German Mittelstand clients and progress is on schedule. So to sum up, we're making progress step by step on our journey of building a world-class platform for Deutsche Bank. We've said consistently, and we say now, that journey will require patience. We've confronted challenges along this way and we'll meet more in coming quarters. This is a dynamic environment. We continually monitor the development and reaffirm the validity of our strategic assumptions. We will continue to work systematically across every part of the bank, resolving legacy matters and configuring our platform for long-term success. We're committed to staying the course and confident we'll deliver. Now let me hand over to Stefan who will discuss the highlights for [indiscernible].

[Stefan Krause:]

Yes. Thank you, Anshu, and good morning to everybody. We are aware that one of our competitors will be doing a conference call at 9

[Anshuman Jain:]

Yes, operator. Thank you. If we could start the Q&A process, please.

[Operator:]

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from Mr. Jon Peace of Nomura.

[Jon Peace:]

The first question was on the deleveraging. I just wondered if you could give us a little bit more color on why the slight increase in cost deleverage just so we can understand a little bit also the phasing and the chances you may under or overshoot there? And the second question... [Technical Difficulty]

[Operator:]

We have the first question from Mr. Jon Peace of Nomura.

[Jon Peace:]

The first question was just on your deleveraging plan. You've increased slightly the cost estimate, so I just wondered if you could help us understand to which of the product categories the cost estimate sits? I just wanted to get an idea of the phasing of the EUR 450 million to EUR 500 million in charges you've identified, and to get a sense of whether there might be any conservatism in those estimates? And then the second question was just a sort of a generic question about the upcoming ECB asset quality review and the stress test. Do you have any thoughts at this stage as to whether that might have any impact on your provisioning or your risk-weighted asset measurement?

[Stefan Krause:]

Okay, on the P&L impact, obviously, there is -- what has happened between the last quarter when we gave you our targets and now the bottom up planning that we do, there's a lot of line items in terms of individual assets, so it's very difficult to attain P&L individually to certain categories. As we had told you as a broad line of thought and generally, the CRD4 error, the exposure reductions, or the derivative exposure reductions generally do carry low P&L. Obviously, then reductions, for example, also on our repo books carry low P&L and all the other positions are the ones that carry then certainly larger ongoing P&L which made us revise our estimates. It's also in our initial estimates. We decided only to cut low ROA assets. And obviously, we're using the low RoE lifting and sequencing that we had, and now we see that it might be smart to keep some of that because it's business driving and has a famous halo effect on other business. So we might not be able only to reduce the assets that carry low ROA because some of that is business driving for other -- of our businesses that cause some of the change in our estimates. On the AQR, honestly, we don't expect any impact from the AQR. I know that there's some perception that there will be, but we don't really see in our balance sheet and we don't see in our positions where we should have or expect significant deviations from where we booked today. It's different, obviously, for the stress test. The stress testing always will deliver some indication, and that will obviously depend from the stress test. So our view is that we, obviously, will expect more results from the subsequent stress tests and we expect directly from the AQR?

[Operator:]

The next question is from Mr. Dirk Becker of Kepler Cheuvreux.

[Dirk Becker:]

I would also like to ask about the upcoming ECB exercise. So what's your understanding of this 8% minimum? Is this the Basel III fully phased or is it the phase-in? So in other words, your starting point is that the 9.7% or is it the 14.6% safe in capital ratio? And then secondly, I noticed you had a very strong decline in the fixed income revenues as you had already advertised. But it seems a little bit more pronounced than what your competitors have reported. So I think this carries on with the question we already had in the second quarter. Does this go along with some market share loss in your perception?

[Stefan Krause:]

So to answer both questions very quickly, it is the phase-in 8%, and that's what our knowledge is of it. So it does compare with our 14.6% current ratio, so you see that for the AQR, we have a significant buffer. For the stress test, the 8% may be different that's something that might include some of the later coming -- obviously, the stress test will extend for 2 years then we look at the 2-year period obviously will include some of the version. So just to be aware that there might be 2 different qualities of 8% that will be applied. So very comfortable on our 14% versus the 8%. Now for the fixed income reduction, we don't see it -- we had a one-off charge related to CVA charges. So if you take that out and really look at the underlying performance, we feel that we were pretty much in line. If I additionally, consider that obviously, we are more largely European than some of our competitors, we were certainly below some of our competitors in our one-to-one comparative. If we looked at least favorites. If we look at client surveys. If you look at it, there's no indication for any loss of market share at this point nor do we see or do we have any concerns around that at this point. We just said overall just a weak environment as many of our competitors reported.

[Operator:]

The next question is from Mr. Kian Abouhossein of JPMorgan.

[Kian Abouhossein:]

Moving away from AQR, few number questions. On Page 2, you have the EUR 360 million in the Core Bank on litigation. Can you please split that into the divisions? The second question is on cost savings, the EUR 1.5 billion, could you please give me an idea where we stand in terms of on a divisional breakdown roughly? And particular, indication of how much is in CB&S and the rest would be very helpful. And it looks to me like you will be easily meeting your target, clearly, of EUR 1.6 billion. So when should we think about the target maybe being brought forward or why wouldn't it be brought forward? The third one is your gross balance sheet is down EUR 122 billion. I was wondering how much of that is FX, so the IFRS balance sheet? And lastly, on the FBO proposal, just very briefly, is there any change from what Stefan has indicated in the past in terms of how you will deal with this issue? And secondly, do you have BaFin approval for the debt swaps that you indicated in the past?

[Stefan Krause:]

Kian, thank you for all your questions. I'll see if I remind them all correctly. First of all, we don't break up litigation by divisions other than telling you that the largest part of our litigation is in NCOU, yes, and it's obviously -- because it's related to legacy matters. We do have litigation in expenses in different divisions that I also can tell you it's not only CB&S business. We had some litigation settlement that did also impact our Asset & Wealth Management business this quarter for example. So we don't break it out. On the EUR 2.5 billion target, I will owe you the numbers. I think we disclosed that at the beginning, we can give you some color on that, but let me do this after the call. I don't have to say that. Then you asked a question about the balance sheet. Would you mind repeating that one? I didn't get that quite.

[Kian Abouhossein:]

Yes, your IFRS balance sheet is down about EUR 122 billion, and I'm just wondering how much of that is FX versus real reduction.

[Stefan Krause:]

So in -- probably, it's about in the EUR 30 billion, number, the reduction in FX that we have on our IFRS balance sheet if I look at the reduction that we had on the CRD4 exposure. And then your last question was related -- can you repeat that?

[Anshuman Jain:]

FBO.

[Kian Abouhossein:]

Yes, on the U.S. FBO proposal?

[Stefan Krause:]

Yes. Oh, yes, yes. We have -- currently, the view is that the plan, as I communicated, is executable, yes, based on everything of the rules. We have actually done a re-review of our FBO overall plan in this quarter, and we also updated, obviously, for the new rules that came out. We updated for the requirement that we know and the conversations we've had, and I can indicate to you, at this point in time, no reason to do any change of that. Only interesting to note, by the way, that our litigation charges, it occurred -- the large litigation charges occurred in the United States. We, obviously, are taking further hits to, obviously, our German capital in order to keep the same alive and keep it going as we have issued it to you. So we continue to update but no change at this point in time.

[Kian Abouhossein:]

And Stefan, one question on, what, the discussion on FBO last time that we had at the conference call. Do you have the agreement from BaFin on implementing such plan, which was related to that swap?

[Stefan Krause:]

The issue is -- it is the interpretation of the laws and the interpretation of our laws, which is the U.S. thing and recognition in terms of, what, let's say, our German -- understand that I cannot comment on regulator statement or communication in an analyst conference call. All I can say to you, it does comply with the laws, and it does comply with the regulation that they set out. Let's not forget what's important for the German side of the equation that we have taken the hit to capital in Germany by the end of 2012. You remember that we took a substantial hit to our German capital within the HGB accounts. So in that sense, our view is -- and we still comply with all capital ratios that we need to comply with, with our German subsidiaries in Germany, and we do comply them, by the way, with ample room to existing even to fully phased-in regulation, yes. So therefore, in that sense, we would not see where there would be any issue. But please understand that I cannot comment on regulator communication or negotiations or discussions.

[Operator:]

The next question is from Mr. Daniele Brupbacher of UBS.

[Daniele Brupbacher:]

Turning again on Slide 9, the EUR 600 million you mentioned there, could you give us a bit a feeling for how when you expect this to be charged to the P&L over time? And then on Slide 10, the EUR 1.3 billion pro forma number you mentioned there, I think it's probably fair to assume that the final definition of exposure will change a little bit. There might be additions, but I think there will also be removals. So, I mean, how comfortable do you feel about potential changes going forward as you put the final definitions? And also, on that slide, the EUR 5 billion AT1 issuance, when should we expect you to start to issue this? Do you -- are there still pending approvals from the BaFin and how we should just think about it? That's it.

[Stefan Krause:]

Okay. Let me walk you through this. The EUR 600 million P&L charge, obviously, the -- first, to clarify, in difference to RWA reduction, when you do reduce balance sheet, obviously, you have to reduce the liability and the asset side. And it turns out that obviously, if you want to maintain your duration on the liability side of the balance sheet, you also will have to reduce longer-term debt. And that's where the expense, a large part of the expense is going to come. So think about, obviously, it will be driven by the speed of asset reductions and then the corresponding speed of liability reductions that we do want to keep the liability structure of our balance sheet in tune. So expect about 2/3 to occur next year and 1/3 to occur in 2015 as we move down this target of this expense to occur, but also consider that the last part of this expense will not be asset driven. It will be liability driven off this onetime expense. Second, how comfortable we are in definitions with -- of our leverage exposure? At this point in time, actually, we are quite confident that CRD4, based on all the communications that we've had, will be the valid European scale. And we, at this time, have no reason to believe that there will be anything else than that. There are some designatory changes that still might occur, but at this time, we believe that CRD4 will be what we have to look at. On the AT1 issuance, they will occur over time until end of 2015. There have been, obviously, no issuance from German banks yet. Obviously, that gives them indication where we stand. But if I can say so, we do expect that before year end, we will be put in a position to execute the transactions, yes. So in that sense, we just expect the claim court and the rules be clarified, so...

[Operator:]

The next question is from Mr. Christopher Wheeler of Mediobanca.

[Christopher Wheeler:]

Yes, a couple of questions, and really, one relates to what you just said there, Stefan, on the fact you don't believe there would be many changes to CRD4. What I wanted to ask you on leverage was how much of your buffer do you think will be eaten up if we get the proposals particularly on repos and CDS sold that were proposed at the end of June if those are actually implemented? How much would that gobble up because I was led to believe that it could actually gobble up about 60 basis points? That was the buffer that you were going to create at the end of the second quarter on a pro forma basis based on your deleveraging. So I just would like to understand why you now think -- or why you think that those proposals will not go through and we, obviously, have seen the comments. And the second question really is something I asked [indiscernible] last week. U.S. banks seem to be very sanguine about the impact of tapering in terms of the withdrawal of liquidity from the markets in -- particularly in respect to fixed income. And I just wondered where you were coming from on that because it seems to me you have many, many headwinds in fixed income and now we have another major one, which we have absolutely no experience of. And I wondered what you could to prepare for that or what you are thinking about in respect to that issue.

[Stefan Krause:]

Okay. Christopher, thank you for your questions. Well, the reason we have pursued -- and we do understand that there's further discussions there around it. So that's why we are building, obviously, some cushion to deal with this [indiscernible], but we don't expect -- if you look at our pro forma calculation, the cushion, it will be between 60 to 80 basis points. And this is, obviously, excluding, at this point, any net income effects that I could have considered in this calculation as well that we left out. We, for sure, have enough buffer to deal with the 3% even if there would be designatory changes of that magnitude. Now currently, we rather expect in the 20 to 30 basis points designatory changes to affect us, so -- which is very well below the buffer that we are building around the leverage. And I'm going to hand off the second question you asked, Christopher, to Anshu.

[Anshuman Jain:]

Chris, on tapering, I think we should all bear in mind that tapering is the end of something very unusual as opposed to the beginning of something terribly restricted. We've been calling for end to tapering since the beginning of the year. Is it having an impact on our business model? It is insomuch as customer volumes have dropped off dramatically. I was looking at a chart the other day, which shows -- where average volumes were pre the tapering talk and post the tapering discussions, and clearly, that is having an impact on industry profitability. In terms of the specific impact of tapering on our business model, we think it's minimal. And in fact, over time, if it winds up with high interest rates and a steeper curve, it will actually give us a dividend. But certainly, the new model, where we are taking much less risk than we used to, the bar levels are way down. Stress levels are way down. We're not that terribly concerned from a business model standpoint. But yes, volumes coming back at some point would be helpful. And indeed, it will normalize once people get accustomed to the new state of work.

[Stefan Krause:]

Chris, one -- additional one. I make -- when I make the statement, they're based only for clarification. We include management action in that. Of course, that number, it would have a significant impact from SFT that would lead us to cut in that area. So just consider that what I mean is the net impact that we see to us.

[Operator:]

The next question is from Mr. Jernej Omahen of Goldman Sachs.

[Jernej Omahen:]

A couple of questions. The first one is on Page 16, where you basically show the CtA targets for the full year and then for the 9 months. And I see that you have basically reaffirmed the CtA charge for the year, which seems to be EUR 1.7 billion for the full year 2013, but you've only taken EUR 0.8 billion for the first 9 months. And I was just wondering whether we should be penciling in roughly EUR 1 billion restructuring charge for the fourth quarter. And if there is any specific reason, why the charge in the third quarter seems to be comparatively low given how much you've got left for the full year? So that's Question #1. Question #2 is when you guide us -- Stefan, when you talk about the volatility of the Core Tier 1 ratio -- so volatility seems, obviously, to imply a movement in either direction, up or down, but if I understand you correctly, you're basically expecting the Core Tier 1 ratio to drop. And I was just wondering whether you could explain in more detail as to what is driving that? The third question is on the FBO proposal, and thanks a lot for the update. You mentioned that -- and I didn't think about that before you said it, but you mentioned that the litigation charges are obviously booked in the U.S. And I was just wondering, your U.S. business, therefore, is it currently loss-making? Or will it be loss-making for the full year? And will you be therefore accruing new tax loss carryforwards? And in that context, can you just remind us what the deferred tax asset number in the U.S. is at the end of this quarter and what you expect it to be? And the second question, on the FBO proposal, I think we previously ran the numbers on the 4.25% to 5.25% leverage ratio when this initially came out on the 6th of December. Now the leverage ratios in the U.S. have gone up. What is your sense as to the likely leverage ratio to be used for FBOs in the U.S.? And what is the likelihood that it is lower than what the Fed will use for the U.S. bank holding companies because, I guess, that makes a big difference? And the final question is more of a strategy question, and it relates to Deutsche Bank's fixed income business and, more particularly, rates. We've seen Credit Suisse last week essentially give up on a substantial portion of their rates business, arguing they can no longer meet a return on equity level, which is even close to their cost of equity given the pending leverage regulation. And I was just wondering what the strategic thought process is on Deutsche Bank's fixed income business. And I guess the same question, put the other way, would be why should it be any different for Deutsche or for any other player for that matter when it comes to rates?

[Stefan Krause:]

So Anshu will go over the last question, and then I will just quickly go through the other technical question. Let me start with the CtA. It's -- you're absolutely right to recognize that we have spent less. Obviously, it's very difficult when you start a program like that to spend -- to claim the timing of expenses. And as I said in my text -- in my presentation, we do not expect to hit the EUR 1.7 billion at this point in time, which doesn't mean that we do expect to lower our CtA overall but just we will have a timing differences between the years. The spending has been lower. There is something to do, and the savings has been higher that, obviously, at the beginning, you have the lower hanging fruit and the less in all the projects that obviously needs less investment. I think there is some logic. Obviously, projects that need high investment, obviously take longer to show results, and projects that meet lower investment tend to show quite quick results on some of these efficiency gains that have been passed. So the timing will be off, but we still stick to our overall EUR 4 billion investment. And especially, also, I have to say that all the investment we do into our regulatory-required improvement is certainly protected, and we will see no reduction of that whatsoever. Nevertheless, the timing of the savings, obviously, is a little bit sped up and, obviously, quite well ahead. We had EUR 1 billion so far, as I said in the text. The second, CT1 volatility, it's something we had explained. And I will tell you the main drivers of this is, obviously, on the one hand, obviously, retained earnings, as you see, that our RWA count is pretty much stable and has been stable over the last couple of quarters. So the driver is really -- certainly coming from income. And if I look at my income over the next couple of quarters, number one, on the positive, we have a seasonal income. We tend to have a very strong first quarter, and then it lowers throughout in fourth quarter. It tends to be, obviously, lower in income generation. And regretfully, obviously, what we can plan -- cannot plan for, on the basis of how we reserve IFRS. It's when we take litigation charges that's either driven by settlement or it's driven then by competitors getting to any settlement positions, which then forces us to take respective reassessment of our provisions and taken that which -- at the end, what happened in this third quarter was, obviously, a lot of litigation activity, as you could read out of the press occurs, and this litigation activity always then results in higher results according to IFRS that we have to do. On the CT1, the next one is also -- if you ask for the DTA rules. Let's not forget there are rules in place. Obviously, the DTA is a deduction items. So the second, other than the net income, is the evolution on the deduction item. They are interesting enough. It always depends where we are booking those one-off items, the litigation. And if you book them in certain entities, you could be even P&L positive in a country, but the legal entity that has to absorb a litigation expense might be in a loss position while the whole country is in a positive P&L position based on P&L of other legal entities. I know it's a little complicated, but I do affirm and confirm to you that our U.S. business is profitable and -- but don't make the mistake, yes, that the profitability in the U.S. could be in certain divisions while others have to -- in certain entities while others have to carry the charge. If we go now on the DTA, there are rules and that's what I tried to explain also in my work. There are technical rules depending on where -- obviously, if our capital goes down, the 10%, 15% rule, which tells us how much we don't have to deduct and then start deducting, yes. These are, so far, the 3 Ds on the 10% and 15%. Obviously, the size will also move with the cover. So we have the volatility increase. The amplitude of the volatility gets increased by this 10%, 15% rule whenever the capital moves down interest enough, we have an acceleration and more 3 Ds and, therefore, less deductions. Whenever the capital goes down, obviously, we will have, based on these rules, an increase of the deductions and, therefore, a lower capital. Now if we look at the FBO rules, we expect -- as we have disclosed to you, we are assuming a 5% rule based on the size of our operations of the rules. At this point, we expect that to be the number, yes. And we see, at this point, this will be flat and no change with this but we, obviously, will await final rule clarification. So that -- but we, at this point at least, have no reason to believe that it should be anything other. But again, there is some rule clarification we have to wait for. Now I pass on to Anshu.

[Anshuman Jain:]

Yes. Regarding the specific question about our rates business, let me point out that we have recalibrated that business quite significantly this year. We combine rates and credit rating. We've taken a huge amount of expense out of the run rate of that business. And the bulk of the EUR 250 billion and balance sheet reduction that we talked about will be -- the brunt of that will come. In our rate franchise, roughly 70% of the EUR 250 billion will come from CB&S, of which most will come from a reduction in our rates balance sheet. Now as regard to your comment about our competitors, we've been saying this all along. We fully expected a number of the second-tier players to fall away. And indeed, that's what we've seen over the course of this year. So what you've seen is a tremendous concentration of market risk among the top few firms. The rate activity -- these are things which our clients desperately need and will always need, and there's no doubt in my mind that over time, the RoE in that business will stabilize to cover and, indeed, come to the fee, cost of equity, for the top firms. Deutsche always has been one, and we intend to remain one.

[Jernej Omahen:]

Stefan, may I just follow up on one point you made. You said that you don't anticipate to use the full EUR 1.7 billion of -- I'm still on Slide 16 of CtA this year. What do you think is the right number we should think about here?

[Stefan Krause:]

So that's what you have to get an estimate because I can't do your job, sorry.

[Jernej Omahen:]

All right. It's a big number though. So I mean, a cynic would say that the reason why the CtA charge was lower this quarter is so that the bank could show a notional profit, right?

[Stefan Krause:]

That's what a cynic would say, but that's the truth.

[Operator:]

The next question is from Mr. Jeremy Sigee of Barclays Capital.

[Jeremy Sigee:]

Just a few follow-up questions, please, on leverage and capital. So on the deleveraging plan, the EUR 250 billion, just a couple of questions, when you last talked about it at the 2Q stage, it sounded like you were sort of keeping an ambiguity on the timing. You said by 2015, which could have been interpreted as being by December 2014. And Slide 10 is -- now seems to be satisfying December 2015. So I just wondered if there's any sort of change in your view of the timing there. Is it getting pushed back a little bit? Related point, the P&L sacrifice from that. So a not the cost-to-achieve, but the ongoing P&L give up, which, at one point, was EUR 300 million pretax and is now EUR 450 million to EUR 550 million pretax. What was the main change in the estimates or the assumptions in that process? And then sort of final question, back on Slide 6, sort of feels like you're sort of trying to warn us about some things on the left-hand side there. You've quantified the potential CRD4 impact. I wondered on the EBA regulatory technical standards or the SSM, what, particularly, are you most worried about?

[Stefan Krause:]

Okay. Let me start. First of all, I can tell you that the ambiguity, don't misunderstand that. There is no change in timing of our EUR 250 billion, and to be honest, the largest part of it will be completed throughout 2014, yes. So I think that we just need to leave that open because there might be some work to be done in 2015 as well. As you see, it's coming down quite rapidly and we will -- we're very comfortable that most of [indiscernible] will be done in 2015. Therefore, also, the onetime charge that we talked about also, the largest amount, will come in 2014. Now you have to -- and this is really what I asked you to consider, discipline that when we see RWA reduction here, we have to lower both assets and liabilities. And obviously, the timing of the expenses, the large part of the expense is associated to the liability reduction here. It's -- obviously, the liability reduction does have some time constraints, does have some limits to it. So that's why we may be moving assets down fast on the liability side. It may be taking some time based on the fact that we not only want to cut the short-term funding of the bank but in the end want to keep the funding profile in terms of the maturity we have in the -- on the liability side. So that's why you see us being a little bit cautious of our statement because it's managing both sides at the time and managing the timing of both sides at the time. And now -- the next question was the increase in the expense. So the increase in the expenses, largely driven that in the initial assumption -- obviously, as we had set out the top-down target, we made some assumption on the lower RoA asset cuts here that we were targeting, as we discussed with the business. We cannot -- the portfolio decisions only cuts lower RoA portfolios. We also have to go into some of the higher RoA portfolio. It's something to do that some of our lower RoA business, and I think the repo business might be a good example of that, yes. It's a business where you have to maintain a certain level in order to drive other P&L, yes, and that is, at the end, what caused us to increase the estimate somewhat that initially was done top-down. On the SSM AQR, I think the biggest challenge that we think, there will be -- it's a little bit the view, it's an expectation in the market that some significant results should come out of the AQR. And we have difficulties to see that as we all have audited balance sheets and as we all comply with IFRS. So at the end, of course, in some of our valuations, management judgment is exercised and there might be, obviously, different views, but at the end, we have to always go back to management judgment decisions on valuations and look at those. Everything else is pretty straightforward. I would not know where significant or expected because in -- balance sheet might be there because otherwise, we also will all have issues with, obviously, our annual ongoing auditing that we do. A different study that we expect, obviously, to get quite some insight on some of the stress testing because the stress testing, obviously, gives different results than an AQR will give you. So far, it's important that there is clarity on the AQR and that there's a lot of transparency. And obviously, there is a cautious way on how this gets communicated to the market. That, I think, was the question.

[Operator:]

The next question is from Mr. Stuart Graham of Autonomous Research LLP.

[Stuart Graham:]

I've got 3 rather random questions. The first question is back to the FBO proposal. You told us the shortfall was EUR 17.2 billion at the end of last year. Can you give us an update on that for the Q3 stage, please? The second question was on the costs. Maybe I misunderstood Anshu's opening comments, but it sounded to me as if there was quite a bit more reinvestment going on than I thought. So could you just help update us on how your exit cost base looks in 2015 versus what you talked about at the Investor Day? Has that changed at all? And then a third question is a bit more strategic. Thinking kind of long term, looking through the AQR and the stress test, looking at the banking union, longer term, if we really do get fungible capital liquidity under a central regulator, how do you see the opportunity for Deutsche Bank in that environment?

[Stefan Krause:]

Yes, Stuart. First, on the FBO, there is no change in the plan, yes. So I acknowledged to you that the view we expect in quarter, there is some minimal nonmaterial change to the plan, so no substantial change for the numbers that we communicated to you. It stays unchanged. We actually have good progress on the balance sheet reduction in the United States, just giving us some room also, so at the end, no real change. And on the cost for reinvestment only, what we want to clarify is that our cost-cutting exercise, on the one hand, is targeting a certain cost base and a cost base -- but then, of course, the regulatory environment, for example, and some of the growth ambitions that certain business divisions have, for example, GTB, that has the growth ambition, et cetera. There will be also offsetting cost increases, but we still stay committed to the numbers of -- the core number is to use 65 basis points plus income ratio. And that's what we are targeting. So the 65 stays unchanged. We only wanted to make you aware that there might be movement. For example, a growing division may, obviously, have some increasing cost while other areas may have more significant decrease, yes. And there is some regulatory add-on cost that is the result of the current additional requirement we have that we also wanted to make you aware of so that we compensate. But at the end, we're targeting 65 basis plus income ratio, right.

[Stuart Graham:]

Sorry. And on the FBO, I mean, your plan assumed that DJs [ph] would go down, whereas it sounds like they're going up, and your plan assumed, I think, EUR 2 billion of litigation cost in the U.S., whereas you've taken more than that already. So I don't see how it can be on track.

[Stefan Krause:]

Let's start -- obviously, U.S., there is a branch that is not part of the FBO and then there is the entities that are part of the IHC. So I think that there is -- yes, there is effect in the United States that I can only verify for you. And we did a detailed look at the plan, and there is no material change to it at this point in time.

[Anshuman Jain:]

Stuart, let me -- sorry, Stuart had the third part to his question. Let me take that before we move to the next question. You talked about our strategic outlook. We chose 2015 very deliberately. This was back in June 2012. We wanted a period of time which gave us enough time to work through the considerable issues, and this quarter is a perfect example of us working through those issues. We're making good progress, and we will wind up needing that time in order to get to a point where we feel we're operationally sound, we have the capital, we have the platform we need, we have the liquidity, we have all our ratios exactly where we need them. Simultaneously, while it would be interesting to think of a time when you have fungible capital and liquidity in Europe, we don't have it yet, and much more significantly, regulatory volatility remains incredibly high. Not a quarter goes by without some surprise coming from some regulator in some part of the world. So certainly, I can tell you at this point, Deutsche Bank is utterly focused on delivering on its organic promises. That's the implication of your question. Down the road, there will be all kinds of interesting strategic optionality which we can then benefit from. We don't see that in the short to maybe even medium term.

[Operator:]

The next question is from Mr. Huw Van Steenis of Morgan Stanley.

[Huw Van Steenis:]

Very much, all the surface are covered, so 2 very quick ones. First, in the -- your national accounts, you significantly toughened up the language on LIBOR potential losses. Is there any clarity you can give around the 1.2x provisions, how much are LIBOR-related versus other? Or would we still expect material further LIBOR provisions after this quarter? And then secondly, in the light of Anshu's comments about very subdued trading, post tapering, I'm assuming that means that continues into Q4. Have you considered further recalibration of the rates business to cut cost or make it even more efficient until we get through this period of volatility?

[Stefan Krause:]

Okay. Let me take those 2 questions. First of all, the reserving is driven by IFRS rules, and the reserving, obviously, has nothing to do with what we expect in that sense. It's driven by the likelihood of a cash outflow and our ability to reliable estimate. So just only to clarify that. It might sound like a nuanced difference, but it's an important difference in terms of how the timing in the litigation occurs. And I will comment all relates to the effect on how -- obviously, we have progress in being able with the likelihood of cash outflows and our ability to reliably estimate on competitors, yes, on how we put the book. And obviously, wherever there-- we don't need the future requirement, especially, it's likely that we will have outflows but a reliable estimate cannot be done. IFRS will not allow us to put reserves on the book. So consider that -- so therefore, there is a mismatch between -- sometimes between how you perceive litigation to evolve and the progress of litigation to evolve versus how the reserving timing occurs. That is -- second, which we wanted to clarify in my statement, if you have a topic that you have assigned a number on in your reserve and that increases, it doesn't automatically reduce, the contingent piece. According to IFRS, the only thing can be in the contingent, where we have a less likelihood than 50%, so also to clarify. So I'm just trying to avoid that we get confused by it. We are observing the market. And as you can observe the market, as we would see progress on further LIBOR and LIBOR settlements and litigation, we'll be able to tell you more about that. And especially, we can, at this point, not make a statement of how much or more to expect or not to expect. It's very difficult to make things at all the different kinds of LIBOR-related litigation this time that are out there right now. On Q4 -- on your Q4 question, no change, no change to our business, whatsoever, no need. We actually think that we are pretty much in line with the market. And honestly, we -- what the Investment Bank did early on, they did expect a reduction early on. They are operating at the capacity that we see in the long term. So we don't see any need to do any changes to our business market there, right.

[Operator:]

The next question is from Mr. Alejandro Berenson [ph] of Newman Investments.

[Unknown Analyst:]

My question is on the subordinated capital and specifically on subordinated bonds that you have not called last month. And I was thinking, is there any capital benefit in not calling these bonds and -- or are you thinking of any way to generate capital from these bonds based on what the market is pricing? Or are you looking at them more as a very cheap, very long-dated source of funding that could be -- that could still offer some loss of option capability in case of any either...

[Stefan Krause:]

Okay. If I got your question relating -- you weren't very clear to hear, but if I got your question, you're asking about the subordinated bonds that we didn't call and if there's any capital benefit from these bonds or whether we look at just [indiscernible]. So as in the past, we monitor and manage our Tier 1 and tier instruments against a metric comprising replacement cost, remaining regulatory value, et cetera, yes. So in terms of what we look at this, as we have said, we behave very shareholder-oriented to this. In that sense, we will do the financially right position from our shareholder point of view. It tells you that, obviously, the cost of these instrument classes is still interesting. Some of our Tier 1 stock still has a Tier 1 -- Tier 2 recognition, yes. So some of these instruments that originally -- where Tier 1 will have a Tier 2 recognition in the new framework. So that's something to consider as well. And obviously, at this point in time, until we know about the new regulation that we expect to be done by year-end on recognition of new Tier 1 instruments, obviously, it's difficult to assess what we -- how we exactly will behave in terms of the near future as soon as we know the rules and the grandfathering rules. So let's leave it at that.

[Operator:]

There are no further questions at this time. Please continue with any points you wish to raise, gentlemen.

[John Andrews:]

Thank you, operator. This is John Andrews again. I'd like to thank you very much for your attention this morning. Obviously, the Investor Relations team is available to all of you for any other follow-up questions, and we wish you a very good day. Thank you.

[Operator:]

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference has now concluded, and you may disconnect your telephones. Thank you for joining, and have a pleasant day.