Deutsche Bank Sold Mortgage-Linked ‘Pigs’ as Market Buckled, Lawmakers Say

Deutsche Bank AG (DBK), whose bets against subprime mortgages helped it weather the financial crisis, pressed to sell a $1.1 billion collateralized debt obligation to clients in 2007 as the co-head of its CDO team foresaw a market slump, a U.S. Senate panel found.

“Keep your fingers crossed but I think we will price this just before the market falls off a cliff,” Michael Lamont, the group’s co-head, said in a Feb. 8, 2007, e-mail about Deutsche Bank’s Gemstone CDO VII Ltd., according to a report released yesterday by the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. The Frankfurt-based firm sold $700 million of the instruments, which lost most of their value within 17 months.

The bi-partisan panel, led by Michigan Democrat Carl Levin, placed Germany’s biggest bank in a spotlight alongside Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS), saying that the firms’ creation and sales of mortgage-backed investments “illustrate a variety of troubling and sometimes abusive practices.” The “case study” also focuses on Greg Lippmann, Deutsche Bank’s then-top CDO trader, who led its bets against subprime home loans and described some Gemstone VII collateral as “pigs” and “crap.”

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