The chief executive of Deutsche Bank has defended the bank’s mixed bag of results as markets reacted negatively to lower-than-expected second-quarter revenues.

Speaking to CNBC on Thursday as Deutsche Bank’s shares traded around 3 percent lower, Chief Executive John Cryan said that the market reaction was “largely driven by the composition of our results” but that lower revenues reflected work the bank was doing to lower overall costs.

“The revenues are a bit lower than I think the market was expecting but then the costs are even lower, so the profits are higher so I think the results are a bit mixed,” he said.

“The lower level of revenues does reflect a lot of the restructuring work that we’ve done over the past year or two. We have shrunk the business a little bit, we’ve sold off some businesses, our non-core unit is completely gone,” he said.

“But I wouldn’t want to suggest that this is the level of revenues that we’re happy with because we do want to grow the business but if you look at the quarter client activity levels really were low.”

On Thursday, Deutsche Bank reported an unexpected surge in profits in the second quarter, beating market estimates and doubling its pre-tax profit figure from last year.

Profit was aided by lower restructuring and litigation charges, but revenues in the second quarter fell 10 percent year-on-year, to 6.6 billion euros. Cryan said three factors had impacted revenues, notably:

“Client activity levels were low, volatility – which is a factor which does affect trading revenues was historically low – and then there were the negative interest rates which really impact a number of our other banking businesses.”

While it was difficult to predict whether the level of client activity in the rest of the year would pick up, Cryan said the macro-economic picture was more positive.

“Macro-economically, it’s good to be in Europe,” he added.

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Source: cnbc europe
Deutsche Bank CEO defends 'mixed' results as shares fall 3%