It seems that everyone knew this was coming – wasn’t it just yesterday that the bank grabbed headlines for purportedly looking to get shareholders on board for a capital-raising effort? And yet its stock falls today on its first quarterly loss in five years. (Who on earth was holding shares with it in mind that that wasn’t going to happen? Talk about not getting the memo.) Here, we offer up the damage report, which, believe it or not, has a Swiss silver lining.

Deutsche Bank AG, Germany's biggest bank, reported its first quarterly loss in five years after writing down the value of loans for leveraged buyouts and asset- backed securities by 2.7 billion euros ($4.2 billion).

The Frankfurt-based company had a first-quarter net loss of 131 million euros after earning 2.12 billion euros a year earlier, according to a statement on its Web site today. Earnings were lifted by almost 1 billion euros from selling stakes in companies and a tax gain. Deutsche Bank fell as much as 1.6 percent in Frankfurt trading.

Chief Executive Officer Josef Ackermann avoided the worst of the subprime contagion because of early bets against U.S. housing and said today there are ``encouraging'' signs that markets are stabilizing. By contrast, UBS AG, the largest Swiss bank, recorded almost 38 billion Swiss francs ($36.7 billion) of markdowns since July, while Credit Suisse Group last week posted its first loss since 2003 on 5.3 billion francs of writedowns.

``The figures look great if you take the Swiss rivals as the benchmark,'' said Juergen Meyer, who helps manage 1.2 billion euros, including Deutsche Bank shares, at SEB Asset Management in Frankfurt. ``If you take a closer look, the numbers really aren't that good and were helped by share sales.''

Deutsche Bank fell 0.7 percent to 76.24 euros as of 9:30 a.m. The German bank has declined 33 percent in the past year, compared with a 30 percent drop in the Bloomberg Europe Banks and Financial Services Index of 59 stocks.

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