The rest are to be bundled into the bank's private-client and asset-management division, which houses Deutsche Bank 24, the retail-banking arm (which already serves some small firms in any case), private banking (for richer customers) and Deutsche's online broker, called maxblue.

ECONOMIST: Germany's biggest bank reshapes itself, again

Like Nintendo, the new generation of small fabless firms capitalise on some special skill (designing cheap but powerful computers in Akia's case) and then use their compactness to run circles around the heavyweights.

ECONOMIST: Small firms in Japan