By contrast, the large German banks have reduced their risk-weighted assets by more than € 150 billion since June 2012; over the past four and a half years, the figure is as high as nearly € billion. This means that these 12 banks have reduced their risk assets by more than one-third in this four-andhalf year period.
I nevertheless basically take a positive view of this deleveraging, since it principally affected the cutback portfolios that were not part of the banks’ core business. At the current end, the profitability of the large banks has stabilised.