Frankfurt headquartered Deutsche Bank posted pre-tax profit in the fourth quarter of 2014. According to the German global banking and financial services company, it made profit of 253 million euros. Drop in litigation costs and increase in trading revenues are supposed to be reasons behind the surprise pre-tax profit.

The largest lender of Germany is yet to settle many major cases, a reason for delaying major litigation expenses in the last quarter of 2014. In a presentation, the bank also warned that there was still major uncertainty as to timing and size of potential impacts from legal costs.

Previously, the bank had expected to resolve the legal issues in 2014, but going by the current situation, there are possibilities that 2015 will be the year when the majority of investigations could be concluded. The bank is being investigated across many divisions including possible attempts at interest-rate and possible violations of the United States sanctions on Iran.

The bank has reported an increase of about 20% in sales and trading. According to the bank, its revenue in the fourth quarter has risen about 19% to about 7.8 billion euros. For the full year, the bank has posted net profit of about 1.7 billion euros after a profit of 681 million euros in 2013.

In a statement, Deutsche Bank's co-chief executives, Jürgen Fitschen and Anshu Jain, said, "While we are encouraged by many of our full-year and fourth-quarter business results, we are working hard to further manage our cost base, maintain our capital strength and increase our returns to shareholders".

According to reports, the bank's single biggest profit segment has seen net revenue rise of about 13% to 1.1 billion euros in the last quarter.