[13] The branch opening in London, after one failure and another partially successful attempt, was a prime necessity for the establishment of credit for the German trade in what was then the world's money center.

[33] Creditanstalt executive Louis de Rothschild was immediately arrested and imprisoned, deprived of his position and property, then released upon payment of $21,000,000, believed to have been the largest bail bond in history for any individual,[34] and migrated to the U.S. in 1939 after more than one year in custody.

[39]: 49  In 1940, following the German invasion of Belgium, Deutsche Bank bought out the Belgian stake under duress and became the AJB's dominant shareholder, with 88 percent held either directly or through Creditanstalt.

In the 1970s, the bank pushed ahead with international expansion, opening new offices in new locations, such as Milan (1977), Moscow, London, Paris, and Tokyo.

[48] At 8:30 am on 30 November 1989, Alfred Herrhausen, chairman of Deutsche Bank, was killed when a car that he was in exploded while he was traveling in the Frankfurt suburb of Bad Homburg.

[54] This made Deutsche Bank the fourth-largest money management firm in the world after UBS, Fidelity Investments, and the Japanese post office's life insurance fund.

In the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks the Deutsche Bank Building in Lower Manhattan, formerly Bankers Trust Plaza, was heavily damaged by the collapse of the South Tower of the World Trade Center.

[60] Meanwhile, in Europe, Deutsche Bank increased its private-banking business by acquiring Rued Blass & Cie (2002) and the Russian investment bank United Financial Group (2005) founded by the United States banker Charles Ryan and the Russian official Boris Fyodorov which followed Anshu Jain's aggressive expansion to gain strong relationships with state partners in Russia.

[59][70][71][72][d] In 2007, the company's headquarters, the Deutsche Bank Twin Towers building, was extensively renovated for three years, certified LEED Platinum and DGNB Gold.

[104] During the Annual General Meeting in May 2019, CEO Christian Sewing said he was expecting a "deluge of criticism" about the bank's performance and announced that he was ready to make "tough cutbacks"[105] after the failure of merger negotiations with Commerzbank AG and weak profitability.

[112][113] In March 2021, Deutsche Bank sold about $4 billion of holdings seized in the implosion of Archegos Capital Management in a private deal.

[114] The move helped Deutsche Bank emerge unscathed after Archegos defaulted on margin loans used to build up highly leveraged bets on stocks.

[126] In 1972, the bank created the world-known blue logo "Slash in a Square" – designed by Anton Stankowski and intended to represent growth within a risk-controlled framework.

[6] In January 2017, Deutsche Bank agreed to a $7.2 billion settlement with the United States Department of Justice over its sale and pooling of toxic mortgage securities in the years leading up to the Financial crisis of 2007–2008.

Since 2012, Deutsche Bank had paid more than €12 billion for litigation, including a deal with U.S. mortgage-finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

[135] In 2009, the bank admitted it engaged in covert espionage on its critics from 2001 to 2007 directed by its corporate security department, although it characterized the incidents as "isolated".

[136] Peter Gauweiler, a principal at the targeted law firm, was quoted as saying "I expect the appropriate authorities including state prosecutors and the bank's oversight agencies will conduct a full investigation.

[147] Commenting on the fine, Britain's Financial Conduct Authority director Georgina Philippou said "This case stands out for the seriousness and duration of the breaches ... One division at Deutsche Bank had a culture of generating profits without proper regard to the integrity of the market.

According to the US federal authorities, Deutsche Bank handled 27,200 US dollar clearing transactions valued at more than US$10.86 billion (€9.98 billion) to help evade US sanctions between early 1999 until 2006 which were done on behalf of Iranian, Libyan, Syrian, Burmese, and Sudanese financial institutions and other entities subject to US sanctions, including entities on the Specially Designated Nationals by the Office of Foreign Assets Control.

[151] In June 2016 six former employees in Germany were accused of being involved in a major tax fraud deal with CO2 emission certificates, and most of them were subsequently convicted.

[162] In June 2023, the bank notified customers that it could no longer guarantee them access to the shares they hold on the basis of depositary receipts issued prior to February 2022.

Deutsche Bank is widely recognized as being the largest creditor to real-estate mogul and politician Donald Trump,[164][165][166] 45th President of the United States, lending him and his company more than $2 billion over twenty years ending 2020.

[181] In May 2019, The New York Times reported that anti-money laundering specialists in the bank detected what appeared to be suspicious transactions involving entities controlled by Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, for which they recommended filing suspicious activity reports with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network of the Treasury Department, but bank executives rejected the recommendations.

[182][183] On 19 November 2019, Thomas Bowers, a former Deutsche Bank executive and head of the American wealth management division, was reported to have committed suicide in his Malibu home.

[184] Bowers had been in charge of overseeing and personally signing over $360 million in high-risk loans for Trump's National Doral Miami resort.

A relationship between Bowers's responsibilities and apparent suicide has not been established; the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner – Coroner closed the case, giving no indication to wrongdoing by third parties.

After a raid in 2019, Frankfurt-based prosecutors imposed a fine of $15.8 million in 2020 for DB's failure on more than 600 occasions to promptly report suspicious transactions.

[198] On 20 July 2018, Deutsche Bank agreed to pay nearly $75 million to settle charges of improper handling of "pre-released" American depositary receipt (ADRs) under investigation of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

[203] In January 2021, Deutsche Bank agreed to pay a U.S. fine of more than $130 million for a scheme to conceal bribes to foreign officials in countries such as Saudi Arabia and China, and the city of Abu Dhabi, between 2008 and 2017 and a commodities case where it spoofed precious metals futures.

Reuters composed a more extensive timeline highlighting how the issue developed over the course of several years including when the stock price fell sharply on news of a US SEC investigation and the resignation of the CEO.