The story
DWS was founded in Hamburg in 1956 as "Deutsche Gesellschaft für Wertpapiersparen mbH" (German Association for Security Saving), the name was later shortened to DWS, "Die Wertpapier Spezialisten" (The Security Specialists). Originally, the activities involved products and investment services that were initially offered to investors in Germany and throughout Europe. Activities under the DWS Investments brand were later expanded to include separate line-ups of products and investments services for investors in the USA, Asia and other regions.
Originally Deutsche Bank held 30% of DWS while the rest was held by other financial institutions. However, by 2004, DWS was wholly owned by Deutsche Bank.
In 2009, DWS took control over Rosenberg Real Estate Equity Funds (RREEF) which was also owned by Deutsche Bank.
In 2012, Deutsche Bank announced the establishment of its Asset & Wealth Management (AWM) division which DWS was fully integrated into. The DWS brand name was retained as the name for the German retail business. However, in 2015, AWM was split into Deutsche Asset Management and Deutsche Bank Wealth Management.
In 2017, Deutsche Asset Management was rebranded to DWS with Deutsche Bank planning to publicly list a minority stake of it.
In 2018, DWS was spun off as a separate company through an initial public offering on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. However, despite being a separate company, the majority of DWS shares are still held by Deutsche Bank at 79.49%.
In October 2018, DWS named Asoka Woehermann as the replacement for former CEO Nicolas Moreau.
In 2022, Asoka Wöhrmann resigned from his post of CEO after the company's offices in Frankfurt were raided by police. He was replaced by Stefan Hoops who was previously head of the corporate bank at Deutsche Bank.
From Wikipedia’s article on DWS Group, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5