Morgan Grenfell profits at £150m after dive in bonds collapse

Morgan Grenfell, Deutsche Bank's London-based merchant bank, made a pre-tax profit of over £150m in 1994, chairman John Craven said in Frankfurt yesterday at Deutsche Bank's annual results news conference.

This compares with £235m the previous year, but analysts said it was a good result considering the bad market conditions and losses at Morgan's rivals.

Mr Craven will formally announce details of the results in London today.

Deutsche Bank board member Juergen Krumnow said that Morgan Grenfell contributed DM300m (£135m) to Deutsche Bank's own-account trading results, which slumped to DM537m from DM1.997m a year earlier.

Deutsche, Germany's largest commercial bank, predicted a rebound in profits this year after plunging world bond prices slashed operating earnings by a quarter in 1994.

"I am confident we shall succeed in substantially improving on last year's result," chief executive Hilmar Kopper said.Deutsche Bank's group operating profit after bad debt provisions fell to DM4.1bn from a record DM5.3bn in 1993.

Trading profits plunged to DM537m from almost DM2bn a year ago. Well over half that profit came from Morgan Grenfell, which is in the process of being merged into Deutsche's other investment banking oper- ations world-wide.

Deutsche admitted it lost DM369m from bond trading but said this was offset by income from dealing in equities, currencies and precious metals.

"The numbers were weaker than expected," Britta Graf, banking analyst at Bankhaus Metzler, told Reuter in Frankfurt.

Deutsche said group net profit fell by 40 per cent to DM1.36bn. But it added that the decline was 12 per cent excluding a loss carried from the failed Schneider property group, a bonus payment to staff for the bank's 125th anniversary, and transfers to reserves.