For more than 140 years Deutsche Bank has had business in the US - a long common history with its ups and downs. Financing the famous US railways is a prime example of Deutsche Bank's early participations in North America.
A management team without experience of business abroad was hardly conceivable for a bank whose purpose, written into its articles of association, was to promote German foreign trade. Georg von Siemens, the first Spokesman of the Board of Managing Directors of Deutsche Bank, and his colleague Hermann Wallich had experience of foreign business, albeit not in North America. Another member of the Board of Managing Directors of the early days, who did not stay for long in the somber offices in Französische Strasse in Berlin, was a German-American: Wilhelm Platenius, whose knowledge of business in New York was to be of use to the bank.