Deutsch-Asiatische Bank

Even though its owners were private-sector banks and its principal activity was trade financing, its role has been described as "quasi-governmental" in the service of the German Empire's influence strategies in East Asia.

[2]: 5  Together with English and French banks, it also played a role in the underwriting of bonds for the Chinese government, issuing the Kiautschou Dollar and financing of railway construction in China.

[6] The bank soon set up branches in Tianjin (1890), Calcutta (1896), Hankou (1897), Qingdao (1897), Hong Kong (1899), Yokohama (1905), Beijing (1905), Kobe (1906), Singapore (1906), Jinan (1910), and Guangzhou (1910).

[4]: 455 In 1914 at the start of World War I, the DAB's operations in Calcutta, Hong Kong and Singapore were promptly closed and liquidated by the British authorities.

Following the normalization of relationships between China and Germany in the early 1920s, the DAB was able to restart activity in Beijing, Guangzhou, Hankou, Shanghai, and Tianjin, as well as the continued operations in Japan.

[12] in 1963, the DAB absorbed the residual operations of Deutsche Bank für Ostasien,[13]: 9  a specialized institution created during World War II to facilitate German-Japanese trade and whose branch in Tokyo had been liquidated by the allied occupation authorities in October 1945.

Building at No. 14 Bund in Shanghai, head office of Deutsch-Asiatische Bank from 1890 to 1917
Shanghai head office during the interwar period, corner of Sichuan and Jiujiang roads, photographed in 2013
Mittelstrasse 2-4 in Berlin , the bank's Berlin office in the interwar period [ 1 ]