Deutsche Bank is pursuing an aggressive expansion strategy through senior hires and a push to widen its advisory work, according to Stephane Gruffat, global head of ECM syndicate, and Nick Williams, managing director and head of US ECM.

This strategy underpins a bank-wide target to lift return on equity above 13%, up from a prior target of above 10% that the bank has already achieved. The higher target requires better returns within IBCM, the bank’s combined investment banking and capital markets division.

“Our strategy is to improve profitability and improve relevance to clients,” Williams said. The bank is positioning itself as a more active participant in the US market and a global coordinator in Europe, cross-selling coverage between the two regions, he said.

There is a deliberate distinction from the traditional IPO advisory mandate, which Williams described as largely about managing process complexity. Effective advice comes from experience across many transactions and market cycles, combined with a practical understanding of how the buy side will interpret a given business, he noted.

As part of this effort, Zach Agranat, a director with 12 years at Bank of America, will join Deutsche Bank’s US equity capital markets group on 31 August, Gruffat said. Agranat’s experience combines sales-trading and capital markets.

Deutsche Bank has also added six new hires across equities distribution in the US, spanning US and international equities, Gruffat said, with more in the making. The hiring is consistent with a plan the bank outlined at its investor deep dive in November 2025 to add up to 60 people across the equity complex over three years, he said. Including Agranat, the bank has made eight new equity complex hires in the US, one in London, and one in Hong Kong so far in 2026, according to Deutsche Bank.

On the ECM side specifically, the bank recently hired a new co-head of European ECM. Paddy Evans joined from Citi, where he spent 20 years. He joined existing co-head Saadi Soudevar, who has been at Deutsche Bank since 2000 and previously held the role alongside Gruffat before Gruffat relocated to New York to run the ECM syndicate business globally in 2024.

Tom Swerling, who joined Deutsche Bank in 2025 from Barclays, holds a mandate covering the bank’s entire equities business rather than ECM alone, Williams said. He described that scope as a structural point of difference from competitors, whose equities revenue is often driven by sales and trading, with the bulk of profit coming from prime brokerage financing hedge funds. Deutsche Bank’s equities business is focused on distributing new issues, producing research coverage, and providing corporate access, he said.

Volumes across the industry rose about 85% and fees about 76% year-on-year in the first half, Gruffat said. Deutsche Bank’s own equity origination revenues rose 148% year-on-year in the second quarter, with market share gains across every region, he said.

Deutsche Bank ranked eighth globally in ECM by volume in the first half and fourth in Europe, Williams said.

Gruffat expects the general ECM issuance pace to slow for part of the third quarter. “I think we’re heading into a natural summer lull now, investors are getting more selective,” he said, adding that he anticipates a substantial pick-up in the window after Labor Day.

Deutsche Bank’s positioning draws on Numis in the UK and coverage across local offices in Germany, France, Switzerland, and Italy for pan-European distribution, along with the bank’s corporate bank and industrial-sector coverage, including Germany’s Mittelstand, as strengths for global industrial issuers, Williams said.

The bank has also been active in cross-border Asia-to-US listing flow, he said.