Deutsche Bank's little jewel in India spared the axe

Mumbai

DEUTSCHE Bank AG, which announced last week it's pulling out of 10 countries around the world to revive profits, left a nation off the chopping block: India.

Unusually, the German investment bank and private-wealth manager gives loans to corporate borrowers as well as consumers from 17 retail bank branches in India - the only country outside Europe where it operates branches. Equally unusually, Deutsche Bank in India has managed to avoid the bad-loan problems plaguing its rivals such as Standard Chartered plc. Instead, Deutsche Bank's unit almost doubled its annual profit in the year through March and has the lowest bad-loan ratio of the five largest foreign banks operating in India, the latest filings to the central bank show.