Michael Reuther, the German lender’s board member for the corporates and markets division, said that from the top levels of Commerzbank’s HQ, the tallest building in Frankfurt, it’s possible to see that despite being a potent financial centre, the city has no sprawl: “Three or four kilometres in any direction, and that’s Frankfurt. It’s really very small.”

When it comes to investment banking, Commerzbank, too, is intent on avoiding sprawl. Commerzbank's investment bank was described in 2004 by then-chairman Klaus-Peter Müller as a "problem child". That year the investment bank was shrunk, restructured and renamed the corporates and markets division in a sweeping operation that foreshadowed the cuts only now being done by many of its European rivals.