Bank mistakenly transfers $34 billion to customer

Germany’s biggest lender Deutsche Bank on Friday admitted to a massive erroneous transfer of €28bn ($34 billion) in a routine operation, more than the entire bank is worth.

The unprecedented mistake happened on March 16 when Deutsche Bank carried out a transfer to an account at Deutsche Boerse’s Eurex clearing house, a spokesman told AFP.

The operation was meant to involve a far smaller sum, which the bank has not revealed, and highlights IT and control issues at the banking giant.

Accounting errors happen most days, but the sum involved in this case is highly unusual and even exceeds Deutsche’s market capitalisation of 24 billion euros.

The incident, which came shortly before John Cryan was ousted as chief executive, was quickly fixed and no harm was done, the institution said.

But it raises questions about the risk management and control processes within the bank, which Cryan was meant to have greatly improved since his arrival in 2016.