A new book written by New York Times reporter David Enrich reveals that Deutsche Bank’s own general counsel was appalled that the bank kept Trump as a client, as he kept defaulting on debts even after all other banks had cut him off from funding.
A review of the book published in the Times reveals that Deutsche Bank was so desperate to have Trump as a high-profile American client that its private banking division kept lending him money even after its real estate division cut him off for failing to repay his loans.
“Deutsche’s brass was so in thrall to Trump’s celebrity, and so eager to expand in America, one division lent $48 million to cancel the debt on a Chicago skyscraper — a debt Trump had defaulted on with another wing of the same bank,” the review explains. “They bought his pitch as voters would. In what could serve as a requiem for the country’s lost innocence, the general counsel said, ‘What the hell are we doing lending money to a guy like this?'”
Much of the book does not deal specifically with Trump, however, and instead details an assortment of scandals that Deutsche Bank has been involved in, including “interest rate manipulation, Russian money laundering, currency dealings with rogue states, the collapse of Italy’s (and the world’s) oldest bank, hidden derivative losses, a high-level suicide,” according to the review.