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Dark Towers summary

Name: Dark Towers
Rating: 4.4 (78 reviews)
Author: David Enrich

David Enrich

Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of Destruction

4.4 (78 ratings)

31 mins

10 key ideas

Audio & text

What is Dark Towers about?

Dark Towers (2020) is a heavily researched look into the ignominious rise and devastating fall of Deutsche Bank. Over the course of 150 years, the bank helped build the American railroad system, funded Nazi genocide, schmoozed Russian oligarchs, and had a hand in the election of President Donald Trump. When Deutsche executive Bill Broeksmit killed himself in 2014, he came to symbolize the destructive power of the bank’s institutional greed.

About the Author

David Enrich is the finance editor for the New York Times. Previously, he led a team of investigative finance reporters in London and New York for the Wall Street Journal. He has won several awards for journalism, and his previous book, The Spider Network, was shortlisted for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award.

Table of Contents

Dark Towers
summarized in 10 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 10

From its founding, Deutsche Bank set a precedent for dealing with unscrupulous characters and nefarious institutions.

In September 1883, a train full of dignitaries pulled into Gold Creek, Montana. Waiting to meet them was Henry Villard, a German immigrant turned railroad tycoon. Villard’s company had built part of the transcontinental railroad, and he was in Montana to nail in the ceremonial last spike. Also present to witness the proceedings was the richly dressed German banker Georg von Siemens. His 13-year-old bank, Deutsche, had bankrolled the railroad.

Despite the pomp, Villard’s business was in shambles. Weeks after the ceremony, it defaulted on its loans, and its investors – including Deutsche – lost their money. But Villard, who had used the borrowed money to build a lavish mansion in Manhattan, refused to accept blame for the debacle.

The key message here is: From its founding, Deutsche Bank set a precedent for dealing with unscrupulous characters and nefarious institutions.

Having skulked back to Germany, Villard made friendly overtures to Siemens. Despite the money he’d lost on Villard’s reckless railroad ambitions, Siemens received him. The two became close friends.

Three years later, in 1886, Siemens sent Villard back to the United States to sniff out potential investments on behalf of Deutsche Bank. For a time, things went well, and Deutsche became a major funder of the US railroad network. But Villard’s nature couldn’t be suppressed; predictably, his new company went bankrupt. Even more predictably, Villard ducked the blame.

Despite Villard’s failings, Deutsche continued to grow, buoyed by European industrialization. By 1913, it was the sixth-largest bank in the world.

When Hitler came to power in 1933, Deutsche became the chief financier for the Nazi regime. The bank was in charge of converting gold stolen from Holocaust victims – including fillings extracted from people’s teeth – into cash. Deutsche also financed the construction of Auschwitz, the notorious concentration camp, as well as the factory that produced Zyklon B, the poison gas used in the camps’ death chambers.

After the war, Deutsche Bank’s ruined Berlin headquarters fell under British command. Because Germany still owed Britain reparations from World War I, it was in Britain’s interest for a strong German bank to resuscitate the economy. Although the bank’s wartime director, Hermann Abs, had been convicted of war crimes, Britain let him off with a light sentence. By 1956, he was running the show at Deutsche once more.

In 1970, the year of its centenary, Deutsche was German through and through. It had built two massive towers that dominated Frankfurt’s skyline, nicknamed “Debit” and “Credit” by locals, and invested in all the top German companies.

In the coming years, this was to change dramatically.

As Deutsche pivoted toward the modern financial system, its company culture changed as well.

In 1987, Alfred Herrhausen took the reins at Deutsche. Inspired by financial innovations in the United Kingdom and the United States – and the booming economies that resulted – Herrhausen bought the British investment bank Morgan Grenfell in 1989 for $1.5 billion. It was the largest-ever acquisition of an investment bank.

Subsequent Deutsche leaders also evangelized the Anglo-American approach to banking. By the time the American bank Goldman Sachs won a coveted contract to privatize Deutsche Telekom, the writing was on the wall. If Wall Street was coming to Germany, then Germany would have to go to Wall Street.

As power continued migrating toward Deutsche’s investments arm, the bank started playing even dirtier.

Despite his popularity at Deutsche – not to mention his high salary – Broeksmit retired in 2000. He wanted, he said, to spend more time with his family. But in truth, the changing culture at Deutsche had begun to wear on him. One of the major catalysts for the change was Deutsche’s acquisition of Bankers Trust.

By the 1990s, Bankers Trust, the heritage American bank, was in dire straits. For one thing, it had emerged that its derivatives deals were flagrantly scamming customers. For another, it was in the habit of striking risky deals – including making an unsecured loan of $100 million to Donald Trump, which he never paid back.

Under Joe Ackermann’s leadership, Deutsche assumed a profit-at-any-price mentality, while letting its infrastructure deteriorate.

The man who appointed Anshu Jain was Joe Ackermann, a Swiss Anglophile with an icy stare and a penchant for numbers. Ackermann had been close with Edson Mitchell and, in 2002, he was named the first-ever CEO of Deutsche Bank. Obviously, a numbers-obsessed leader is good for a bank. But Ackermann tended to focus on profit – and profit only.

The key message here is: Under Joe Ackermann’s leadership, Deutsche assumed a profit-at-any-price mentality, while letting its infrastructure deteriorate.

Trump had burned other banks in the past, but Deutsche was so eager for growth that it worked with him anyway.

Deutsche’s work-with-anyone approach didn’t just include failed states and dictators. The bank continued to do business with brash New York real estate celebrity Donald Trump.

Justin Kennedy was Trump’s point person at Deutsche. He championed Trump’s petitions for increasingly large real estate loans through the bank and accompanied Trump to Manhattan nightclubs and soirées. The largest of these loans came in 2005, when Deutsche lent Trump $640 million to build a luxury tower in Chicago.

Deutsche Bank weathered the Great Recession due to luck and subterfuge.

There wasn’t much love lost between Anshu Jain and Joe Ackermann. Ackermann didn’t trust Jain and regularly badmouthed him to board members behind his back. For his part, Jain thought he was putting in all the hard work while Ackermann swanned around at state dinners.

But the two executives had one important thing in common: they knew how to make money. The trouble was, that was all they knew how to do. Jain wasn’t a good leader or a responsible executive. He screamed at subordinates and didn’t take disagreement well. But, for Jain and his team, the ends justified the means. It didn’t matter how the money was coming in, as long as it was coming.

Tasked with solving Deutsche’s problems, Bill Broeksmit felt increasingly alienated from the business he’d helped to establish.

Slowly but surely, regulators wised up to what was going on behind Deutsche’s closed doors. In the first eight months of 2013, Deutsche fielded 5,777 requests for information – about one every hour.

A British investigator brought a tax fraud case against Deutsche. Instead of putting a stop to the illegal behavior, Deutsche moved its racket to Germany. By the time the Germans forced Deutsche to pull the plug, they had swindled the two governments out of nearly $250 million.

Anshu Jain’s resignation was a harbinger of a new era of reckoning, and restructuring, at Deutsche Bank.

In the wake of Broeksmit’s death, Jain and other Deutsche top brass were left to make tough decisions about the future of the bank without his steady hand.

Deutsche’s troubles with regulators had spooked investors, and the stock price was at its lowest point ever. It didn’t seem like there was an end in sight. By 2015, there were over 7,000 outstanding legal actions against Deutsche all over the world. Billions in fines were looming.

Millions in loans from Deutsche – and an associated veneer of legitimacy – helped Trump become a US president.

Deutsche’s legal entanglement with Donald Trump stretched into 2010, when the bank agreed to let him off the hook for a $40 million flat rate. Trump must have been pretty happy – that was about $300 million less than he owed.

But he still didn’t have the money. Jared Kushner, by then Trump’s son-in-law, introduced Trump to his personal banker, Rosemary Vrablic of Deutsche. Vrablic got her start working for an Israeli bank specializing in money laundering and had made a name for herself by bringing huge new clients to Deutsche.

Val’s cache of internal Deutsche Bank documents shed light on Deutsche’s dirty deeds – and Bill’s suicide.

Many of the troubles that haunted Deutsche Bank in the years after Bill Broeksmit’s death were predictable. But one problem loomed that was almost impossible to predict, much less control: Valentin Broeksmit.

Val was Bill’s stepson, and his life had been difficult. He’d spent years in foster care before Bill adopted him. As an adult, he worked on and off as a musician, partied hard, and lived off his father’s largesse.

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Best quote from Dark Towers

Oh my God, were screwed. – Justin Kennedy, upon learning of Edson Mitchells death.

—David Enrich

Who should read Dark Towers

People who work in finance
Anyone still mad about the government’s Wall Street bailout
Stock market watchers

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Dark Towers summary

What is Dark Towers about?

About the Author

Dark Towers
summarized in 10 key ideas

From its founding, Deutsche Bank set a precedent for dealing with unscrupulous characters and nefarious institutions.

As Deutsche pivoted toward the modern financial system, its company culture changed as well.

As power continued migrating toward Deutsche’s investments arm, the bank started playing even dirtier.

Under Joe Ackermann’s leadership, Deutsche assumed a profit-at-any-price mentality, while letting its infrastructure deteriorate.

Trump had burned other banks in the past, but Deutsche was so eager for growth that it worked with him anyway.

Deutsche Bank weathered the Great Recession due to luck and subterfuge.

Tasked with solving Deutsche’s problems, Bill Broeksmit felt increasingly alienated from the business he’d helped to establish.

Anshu Jain’s resignation was a harbinger of a new era of reckoning, and restructuring, at Deutsche Bank.

Millions in loans from Deutsche – and an associated veneer of legitimacy – helped Trump become a US president.

Val’s cache of internal Deutsche Bank documents shed light on Deutsche’s dirty deeds – and Bill’s suicide.

Key ideas in Dark Towers

From its founding, Deutsche Bank set a precedent for dealing with unscrupulous characters and nefarious institutions.

As Deutsche pivoted toward the modern financial system, its company culture changed as well.

As power continued migrating toward Deutsche’s investments arm, the bank started playing even dirtier.

Under Joe Ackermann’s leadership, Deutsche assumed a profit-at-any-price mentality, while letting its infrastructure deteriorate.

Trump had burned other banks in the past, but Deutsche was so eager for growth that it worked with him anyway.

Deutsche Bank weathered the Great Recession due to luck and subterfuge.

Tasked with solving Deutsche’s problems, Bill Broeksmit felt increasingly alienated from the business he’d helped to establish.

Anshu Jain’s resignation was a harbinger of a new era of reckoning, and restructuring, at Deutsche Bank.

Millions in loans from Deutsche – and an associated veneer of legitimacy – helped Trump become a US president.

Val’s cache of internal Deutsche Bank documents shed light on Deutsche’s dirty deeds – and Bill’s suicide.

Best quote from Dark Towers

Who should read Dark Towers

Categories with Dark Towers

Books like Dark Towers

Discover the Blinkist catalogue

Popular titles

Most popular categories

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Dark Towers summary

What is Dark Towers about?

About the Author

Dark Towers summarized in 10 key ideas

From its founding, Deutsche Bank set a precedent for dealing with unscrupulous characters and nefarious institutions.

As Deutsche pivoted toward the modern financial system, its company culture changed as well.

As power continued migrating toward Deutsche’s investments arm, the bank started playing even dirtier.

Under Joe Ackermann’s leadership, Deutsche assumed a profit-at-any-price mentality, while letting its infrastructure deteriorate.

Trump had burned other banks in the past, but Deutsche was so eager for growth that it worked with him anyway.

Deutsche Bank weathered the Great Recession due to luck and subterfuge.

Tasked with solving Deutsche’s problems, Bill Broeksmit felt increasingly alienated from the business he’d helped to establish.

Anshu Jain’s resignation was a harbinger of a new era of reckoning, and restructuring, at Deutsche Bank.

Millions in loans from Deutsche – and an associated veneer of legitimacy – helped Trump become a US president.

Val’s cache of internal Deutsche Bank documents shed light on Deutsche’s dirty deeds – and Bill’s suicide.

Key ideas in Dark Towers

From its founding, Deutsche Bank set a precedent for dealing with unscrupulous characters and nefarious institutions.

As Deutsche pivoted toward the modern financial system, its company culture changed as well.

As power continued migrating toward Deutsche’s investments arm, the bank started playing even dirtier.

Under Joe Ackermann’s leadership, Deutsche assumed a profit-at-any-price mentality, while letting its infrastructure deteriorate.

Trump had burned other banks in the past, but Deutsche was so eager for growth that it worked with him anyway.

Deutsche Bank weathered the Great Recession due to luck and subterfuge.

Tasked with solving Deutsche’s problems, Bill Broeksmit felt increasingly alienated from the business he’d helped to establish.

Anshu Jain’s resignation was a harbinger of a new era of reckoning, and restructuring, at Deutsche Bank.

Millions in loans from Deutsche – and an associated veneer of legitimacy – helped Trump become a US president.

Val’s cache of internal Deutsche Bank documents shed light on Deutsche’s dirty deeds – and Bill’s suicide.

Best quote from Dark Towers

Who should read Dark Towers

Categories with Dark Towers

Books like Dark Towers

Discover the Blinkist catalogue

Popular titles

Most popular categories

Trending Collections

Dark Towers
summarized in 10 key ideas