Rising trading revenues boosted Deutsche Bank's pretax profit to a record €6.4 billion ($7.7 billion) in 2005, it reported today.
The result beat chief executive Josef Ackermann's key target of a 25 per cent pretax return on equity - which he had said was equivalent to €6 billion. Deutsche Bank reported an ROE of 26 per cent for 2005, a level that Mr Ackermann said he wanted to maintain.
Analysts said the results were broadly as expected.
But Deutsche's shares slipped in an otherwise slightly firmer DAX blue-chip index. The stock was down 0.6 per cent at €89.15 by 9.12am.
Although trading revenue - the money the bank makes buying and selling shares and other securities - slipped in the final three months of the year, it remained the bank's biggest earnings driver and was up 20 per cent over the full year.
The bank's supervisory board had decided on the dividend increase, which will be proposed to shareholders later this year, at a meeting yesterday.
Concerns that the bank might be too dependent on trading income, which is considered volatile, have long overshadowed Germany's flagship bank, and weighed on its share performance.
Deutsche Bank's price/earnings ratio lags that of its international rivals and other major banks at home.
The bank has recently shown some signs of catching up, however. Its stock price rose by about a quarter last year, outpacing the average performance of its European rivals.