by David Enrich
First published 2020
Deutsche Bank stands as the most reckless financial institution on Earth. Award-winning journalist David Enrich traces how this 150-year-old German bank transformed into a global criminal enterprise. The story begins in the 1880s when Deutsche propped up a failing American developer, continues through its financing of Nazi concentration camps, and follows its courtship of Eastern European dictators. In the 1990s, aggressive executives pushed the bank toward Wall Street profits while abandoning ethics and legal compliance. Deutsche manipulated markets, violated sanctions to help terrorist states, defrauded investors and regulators, and laundered money for Russian oligarchs. Desperate for American business, the bank embraced Donald Trump when other institutions refused him. Over two decades, Deutsche loaned billions to Trump, the Kushner family, and Jeffrey Epstein. The human cost emerges through Bill Broeksmit, a senior executive who helped build the bank's power but died under mysterious circumstances in his London apartment in 2014. His death triggered his son's relentless hunt for the truth his father had hidden.
Genres: history, business, crime, economics, 21st-century
Vibes: dark, emotional, fast-paced, thought-provoking
Tropes: corporate-greed, deception, global-conspiracy, whistleblower
Setting: Deutsche Bank, Germany, United States, Eastern Europe
Period: 1880s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s
448 pages · Hardcover · Mariner Books