Summary of David Enrich's Dark Towers

By IRB Media

Get the Summary of David Enrich's Dark Towers in 20 minutes. Please note: This is a summary & not the original book. Original book introduction: In Dark Towers, award-winning journalist David Enrich reveals the truth about Deutsche Bank and its epic path of devastation. Tracing the bank’s history back to its propping up of a default-prone American developer in the 1880s, helping the Nazis build Auschwitz, and wooing Eastern Bloc authoritarians, he shows how in the 1990s, via a succession of hard-charging executives, Deutsche made a fateful decision to pursue Wall Street riches, often at the expense of ethics and the law.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Dec 8, 2021
• ISBN: 9781669342960

IRB Media

With IRB books, you can get the key takeaways and analysis of a book in 15 minutes. We read every chapter, identify the key takeaways and analyze them for your convenience.

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Insights on David Enrich's Dark Towers

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

One rainy Sunday in January 2014, a man named Val Broeksmit arrived at the Saatchi Gallery to have brunch with his parents. They were supposed to be there at one o’clock, but they were nowhere to be found.

#2

One of the first things CEO Jack Brand did upon taking over at Deutsche Bank was to bring in Bill Broeksmit, a former Lehman Brothers executive, to the board of directors. He figured that the best way to clean up the business was to involve people who shared his values and morals.

#3

Trump was one of the bank’s largest clients. For nearly two decades, Deutsche had been the only mainstream bank that would consistently work with Trump.

#4

After decades of making expedient, short-term choices with the singular goal of maximizing immediate profits, Deutsche had internalized a painful lesson: its long-standing inability to say no.

#5

The rise and fall of Deutsche Bank spans several decades, and involves many players. It all started with the Americans who came to Germany to lend money, and ended with the bank being saved from bankruptcy only to be used by Trump.

Insights from Chapter 2

#1

Henry Villard, a German immigrant who rose to become a famous journalist and industrialist, was the main investor in the Northern Pacific Railroad. In 1883, he came to Montana to celebrate the completion of the line.

#2

The company that Villard helped create, Northern Pacific, went bankrupt in 1883. Georg von Siemens, the man who helped found Deutsche Bank, was its first leader. He was a boisterous man who lacked banking knowledge.

#3

Henry Villard, the man who had financed the building of the Northern Pacific Railroad, went bankrupt twice in a decade, both times due to his over-leveraged railroad.

#4

After World War I, the German economy started to grow rapidly. This led to the rise of the Nazi party which, among other things, targeted and eventually eliminated all Jewish businesses and people from Germany. This is an example of how a large German company, Deutsche Bank, was involved in the Holocaust.

#5

Deutsche Bank was so synonymous