230967 com titel gb 02 e

8 MANAGEMENT REPORT
Structure of provision for possible loan losses
that last year’s record wave of insolvencies in Germany did not leave us
unscathed either. It was encouraging, though, that in the final quarter we
required an amount 26% lower than in the previous quarter.
All told, our provisioning ratio of 0.77% is quite presentable; even by international
comparison, this is a respectable figure.
Successful sales of open-ended property funds
The decline in net commission income was limited, even though equity markets
gave no cause for joy. In securities business, we achieved great sales successes
with our open-ended property fund Haus-Invest, thereby almost compensating
for our customers’ lack of interest in equities. Gains were registered in foreign
commercial business, payment transactions and commissions on guarantees.
By contrast, syndicated and asset-management business were weaker. All in all,
net commission income was down by 7147m, or 6.5%, to 72.1bn.
Lower interest rates produced a negative result on hedge accounting of
756m, compared with a plus of 763m a year earlier.
The dismal state of the capital market hit our trading profit in particular hard
in 2002, more than halving it in a year-on-year comparison to 7544m. In Securities
alone, where all our securities and foreign-exchange activities are now
bundled, earnings were down by practically 7500m.
The result on our investments and securities portfolio, which shows a negative
balance of 788m, was affected by various extraordinary factors last year.
This includes write-downs on T-Online, on various investment-fund certificates
and on private-equity investments. On the positive side, there is the income
from our Crédit Lyonnais transaction.
Sharp reduction in operating expenses
Not even our successes on the cost side were able to offset the decline in operating
income. All the same, though, our operating expenses fell by 7700m to
75.15bn. This means that we more than achieved our target under the cost-cutting
offensive launched in 2001, which was to get costs down to below 75.5bn.
The 12.6% decrease in personnel costs was primarily due to the shedding of
jobs; at Group level, the workforce contracted by almost 3,000 in the course of
the year to 36,566. In addition, the lower bonuses for 2002 also had a cost effect
here, which were on average down by a good third.
Other operating expenses receded by 13.9% to 71.9bn. The impact of our
economy measures can now also be seen in the depreciation on office furniture
and equipment and real property; instead of climbing further, it fell by 3.1% to
7538m.
Commerzbank Group, in 7 m 2002 2001 2000 1999 1998
Germany 946 555 529 522 395
Abroad 365 325 148 89 394
Global provision 10 47 8 78 92
Total net provision 1,321 927 685 689 881