FRANKFURT, Oct. 27 (Xinhua) -- Troubled Deutsche Bank reported on Thursday that it had achieved an unexpected pre-tax profit of 619 million euros (676.09 million U.S. dollars) and net income of 278 million euros in the third quarter of 2016.
The revenues had risen slightly by 0.2 billion euros to 7.5 billion euros against the same quarter last year, despite a tough interest rate environment, said the largest German commercial bank in its report.
In the first nine months of this year, Deutsche Bank has earned around 4.6 billion euros in its operating business, leaving pre-tax profits of 1.6 billion euros, which showed remarkable improvement in comparison with the gross loss of 3.4 billion euros in the third quarter 2015.
However, Deutsche Bank had spent around 3 billion euros on restructuring and severance, litigation charges, impairments and reducing assets in its non-core operations unit in the first three quarters this year, which burdened the bank's profitability.
"Of course, legal cases like these are a burden for us and cause concerns which are reflected, for example, in the volatility of our share price," said Deutsche Bank CEO John Cryan in a letter to his staff. He refused to comment on "numerous rumours" in detail.
Deutsche Bank is facing a potential fine of up to 14 billion U.S. dollars from the U.S. Department of Justice over the mis-selling of mortgage-backed securities in the run-up to the financial crisis, regarding which the bank's head said "unfortunately, we must anticipate that the situation will remain tough for some time to come."
"Discussions with the Department of Justice are moving forward and we are working hard on achieving a resolution of this matter as soon as possible," he added.
In addition, Cryan pointed out his bank remained financially strong, with a liquidity reserve of some 200 billion euros at the end of the third quarter, historically low levels of market risk, and strong credit quality in loan portfolio.
