German investors bought shares in Deutsche Bank in unprecedented numbers last year, returning the country’s flagship bank to majority domestic ownership in an unintended consequence of the financial crisis.

More than 220,000 shareholders joined the bank’s share register last year, most of them in the last three months of the year when bank valuations plunged after Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy. The proportion of shares held by retail investors had doubled to 29 per cent, the bank said.