A year ago, Christian Sewing said he thought he was at 30 kilometers on a 42-kilometer marathon route.

The Deutsche Bank boss was already aware at the time that it would only get really exhausting from this mileage.

Today, Sewing has the goal in mind, and he could still stumble.

It's not even unlikely.

What Sewing would then have left would be that he showed everyone with this first half of 2022: Deutsche Bank can win Sewing's marathon - if the general conditions are right.

In the first half of 2022, the framework conditions were not perfect, but better for Deutsche Bank than for many competitors.

This is thanks to the focus that Sewing gave Deutsche Bank in the summer of 2019 in investment banking, which is crucial for them: no more global stock trading, not so much advice on company acquisitions and takeovers (M&A), hardly any commodities trading;

Instead, full energy on what Deutsche Bank is good at and where its market share is high: currency trading and bond trading.

This is how Sewings Marathon began in the summer of 2019.

In the second quarter of 2022 things went very well

And in the second quarter of 2022, things really took off in Sewing’s focus area: companies needed protection against the euro falling below par with the dollar and against the falling bond prices after the sharp turnaround in interest rates.

And Deutsche Bank was there, its earnings in currency and interest rate trading benefiting from brisk client activity.

Deutsche Bank made up ground against its US competitors and, so to speak, picked up the sprint again.

The fact that after the Russian attack on Ukraine the business with initial public offerings (IPO) almost came to a standstill and the M&A business weakened significantly, Deutsche Bank felt differently than US banks such as Goldman Sachs or JP Morgan because of their already small market shares there hardly.

Deutsche Bank's results in the second quarter of 2022 are more than impressive: The eighth quarterly profit in a row and the highest in a second quarter in eleven years.

Sewing almost reached its goal of a return on equity (RoTE) of 8 percent in the first half of 2022 with 7.9 percent.

But will he make it to the finish line by the end of the year?

doubts are warranted.

Is risk provisioning within limits?

Because one reason why Deutsche Bank was able to increase its after-tax profit by 46 percent in the second quarter of 2022, while competitors such as JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs recorded profit declines of between 28 and 47 percent, is the very low provision for loans at risk of default.

One almost has the impression that Sewing has not yet wanted to be slowed down in his sprint to the finish line.

In any case, his CFO James von Moltke admits that he only allowed “a bit of conservatism” to flow into the formation of the loan loss provisions.

In fact, during the Corona crisis, Deutsche Bank proved that it has a good loan book and is good at estimating the value adjustments that are actually required.

But the storm that is now gathering, with higher interest rates and an impending recession, will probably not be as softly absorbed by politicians as the corona lockdowns.

Corporate bankruptcies are likely to increase again, at least if gas has to be rationed.

Other lenders such as Commerzbank have already prepared for the defaulting loans with significantly higher risk provisions.

Deutsche Bank, on the other hand, appears to be largely waiting until the credit quality in its loan portfolio actually deteriorates measurably.

You can do it like this.

But then the end of the marathon may be all the more abrupt and painful.

But Sewing still has the goal in mind.

The finish line is even clearer than ever before.

In the second half of the year, Deutsche Bank has to prove its surefootedness in an unexpectedly difficult area.