What Deutsche Bank needed, after admitting this week that Strategy 2015+, its five-year remake, had failed to hit crucial targets, was the nerve to do something radical. Instead it spelt out “Strategy 2020” – which looked sadly similar to what most of the competition is planning to do.

Deutsche Bank's joint chief executive, Anshu Jain, explained on an investor call on April 27 that "Strategy 2015+" had not missed all its targets. It achieved its >10% Basel III core tier 1 ratio, and profitability, excluding litigation, was improved by the downsizing of the capital market business. And its plan to spin off Postbank made sense because the ever-changing EU regulatory environment, which has constrained the ability of Deutsche to use retail deposits for institutional funding, doomed the economics of the earlier €6 billion acquisition.