comdirect publishes 2008 annual report

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announcement.
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Pre-tax profit of EUR 77.8m - launch of new complus programme -
growth continues in new financial year

Quickborn, 20 March 2009. comdirect bank is publishing its annual
report for 2008 today. The new annual report confirms the figures
presented at the press conference in February. comdirect bank
achieved pre-tax profit of EUR 77.8m (previous year: EUR 90.5m) in
financial year 2008, outstripping its target of EUR 70m by more than
10%. At EUR 57.7m, after-tax profit matched that of the previous
year. At the same time, EUR 73m was spent on growth, more than ever
before. A dividend of 41 cents per share will be proposed to the
annual general meeting, which corresponds to the same level of
dividend in the previous year.

comdirect bank achieved strong growth in adverse market conditions in
2008. The number of customers increased by 348,575, or 35%, to
1,349,297. At the year-end, 814,516 customers held a Tagesgeld PLUS
account, more than double the number of accounts held in the previous
year. In addition, the number of current accounts rose by 26% to
425,149 and the number of custody accounts by 8% to 697,806. In
advice, subsidiary comdirect private finance serviced 46,585
customers at the year-end, 43% more than at the close of 2007. The
mortgage offering launched in January 2008 outperformed expectations,
placing financing of around EUR 200m.

comdirect bank continued its growth in the new financial year. The
number of customers, for example, increased in the first two months
to 1,372,182. The number of current accounts rose to 456,291 and the
number of Tagesgeld PLUS accounts to 850,147.

The new complus programme launched in February 2009 is set to ensure
comdirect bank's further expansion. Through complus, the direct bank
is developing new, attractive and clear products and services.
Moreover, the bank intends to further improve customer satisfaction
levels and consequently product penetration through targeted and
direct customer contact. The basis for this is the effective
comdirect platform and further optimisation measures are set to
increase productivity and efficiency and generate additional
economies of scale. Furthermore, new direct-bank type advisory models
will be developed for building finance, investments and provisioning.

Through complus, comdirect bank intends to continue to grow and
become even more profitable. By 2013, the direct bank aims to achieve
pre-tax profit of between EUR 150m and EUR 160m. At the same time,
the number of customers is to be increased by 1 million to 2.3
million and assets under custody to more than EUR 40bn.

The new comdirect annual report is now available to download as a pdf
file at www.comdirect.de/publications. The full annual report will
also be published as an online version on 27 March. The online
version has a number of additional functions such as the full text
search and Quick Analyser, which enables the user to show and compare
figures interactively. The "My annual report" function also allows
the user to individually compile selected sections of the annual
report. The most important tables in the financial report can also be
downloaded in Excel format.

Overview

+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|EUR thousand | 2007|Q1/08 | Q2/08|Q3/08 |Q4/08 | 2008|2008 vs|
| | | | | | | | 2007|
|--------------------------+-------+------+--------+------+------+--------+-------|
|Net interest income before|127,164|41,530| 40,463|42,179|38,200| 162,372| 27.7%|
|provisions | | | | | | | |
|--------------------------+-------+------+--------+------+------+--------+-------|
|Provisions for possible | -1,947| -116| -279| -961| 184| -1,172| - |
|loan losses | | | | | | | |
|--------------------------+-------+------+--------+------+------+--------+-------|
|Net commission income |152,724|36,324| 29,324|31,338|41,455| 138,441| -9.4%|
|--------------------------+-------+------+--------+------+------+--------+-------|
|Other income | -24| -207| -3,231|-1,006|-8,689|- 13,133| - |
|--------------------------+-------+------+--------+------+------+--------+-------|
|Administrative expenses |187,437|50,040| 53,520|50,955|54,233| 208,748| 11.4%|
|--------------------------+-------+------+--------+------+------+--------+-------|
|Pre-tax profit | 90,480|27,491| 12,757|20,595|16,917| 77,760| -14.1%|
|--------------------------+-------+------+--------+------+------+--------+-------|
|After-tax profit | 57,697|20,407| 9,625|14,878|12,782| 57,692| 0.0%|
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

Length: 3,048 characters incl. spaces, excl. table

Contact: Johannes Friedemann, comdirect bank AG,
Tel: +49 4106-704-1340, e-mail: presse@comdirect.de.

Press information:
All press releases are available at http://www.comdirect.de/pr
If you no longer wish to receive these press releases, please send an
e-mail to presse@comdirect.de.

--- End of Message ---

comdirect bank AG
Pascalkehre 15 Quickborn Germany

WKN: 542800;
ISIN: DE0005428007; Index: CDAX, CLASSIC All Share, Prime All Share,
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