While Cryan didn’t specify which clients were shaken up, each of the four units he plans to keep saw a drop in revenue in the second quarter from a year earlier. Net income plunged 98 percent.

Banks are “under pressure,” so investors have a fiduciary duty to their clients to examine their credit standing when allocating deposits, Euan Munro, head of Aviva Investors Global Services, told Manus Cranny on Bloomberg TV on Thursday.

“If banks are sitting in a weaker position, they do need to be concerned,” Munro said, without mentioning Deutsche Bank specifically. At the same time, betting against banks stocks “would be quite a dangerous activity” given their “massive discounts to book value.”

The company’s asset management business had 9 billion euros of net client withdrawals in the quarter, according to its filings. A decline at a unit catering to hedge funds -- a key part of the equity-trading business -- reflected lower average customer balances and a drop in activity, the bank said. That contributed to a 31 percent decline in revenue from equity trading, a business Cryan wants to expand.

“Market confidence is rapidly deteriorating,” said Mark Williams, a master lecturer on finance at Boston University and a former bank examiner at the Federal Reserve. “At this point, the bank can’t wait for the sluggish European economy to bail it out.”

U.S. Advantage

Debt trading revenue fell 19 percent at Deutsche Bank in the second quarter from a year earlier, even as the five biggest U.S. securities firms saw their combined revenue from that business rise 22 percent over the same period. Cryan attributed the outperformance of competitors in part to a more robust economy in the U.S., and said he expects the bank to remain the fourth-largest trader of fixed income and currencies.

“Deutsche Bank’s reputation has definitely suffered,” Ingo Speich, a fund manager at Union Investment, which oversees 268.5 billion euros of assets and is a top 25 Deutsche Bank shareholder, said in an interview in Frankfurt. “That hasn’t had a huge impact on its business, but the situation is worse than a year ago.”

The bank’s common equity Tier 1 ratio edged higher to 10.8 percent at the end of June, and Cryan said the effect of several asset sales will lift the level further this half. He has repeatedly said he doesn’t plan to sell shares, telling investors in May that the firm is making progress with its overhaul and that he’s “convinced we can realize this transformation with our own funds.”

Deutsche Bank has raised 21.7 billion euros from investors through three capital increases since the global financial crisis forced European lenders ranging from Commerzbank AG to Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc into bailouts.