Two years on from a radical overhaul and a brutal cull of its employee ranks, Deutsche Bank is changing its tune.

A surge in dealmaking activity, combined with a pandemic-fuelled trading boom, has prompted executives at the German lender to start thinking about expansion. They want to capitalise on recent strong performance — the investment bank unit accounted for 43% of overall revenue in the first three months of the year and has been profitable every quarter since the start of 2020. To do that, the bank is hiring senior dealmakers and looking to grab market share from rivals on the trading floor.