Aaron Kirchfeld, Bloomberg

Deutsche Bank AG’s head of consumer banking said Germany’s biggest bank will invest in emerging markets such as India and China to tap strong economic growth.

“We are investing in the internationalization,” Deutsche Bank’s Rainer Neske told a banking conference in Mainz, Germany today. He compared emerging-market growth trends to earlier developments in eastern Europe.

Deutsche Bank aims to expand consumer banking and money management to help increase pretax profit, excluding nonrecurring gains or costs, to 8.4 billion euros in 2008. The bank opened eight branches in India and began selling credit cards there. It also bought a 14% stake in China’s Huaxia Bank with Sal. Oppenheim Jr. & Cie.

“The growth we’ve achieved in India with so few branches shows how dynamic the market there is,” Neske said. Deutsche Bank is also looking at other new markets, he said. In February, the bank agreed to buy 20% of Vietnamese finance company Hanoi Building Commercial Joint Stock Bank for an undisclosed amount.

Deutsche Bank plans to invest in its branch network in European market such as Italy, where it plans to start a “second wave” of branch expansion. The German bank now has more than 1,400 branches in Europe.