Reporting standards
Annual financial statements
The annual financial statements and management report of DB AG as prepared by the Management Board, and the consolidated financial statements and Group management report as of December 31, 2024, were audited by KPMG AG Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft (KPMG), the auditors appointed at the Annual General Meeting, and issued with an unqualified audit opinion.
Sustainability reporting
The 2025 Annual Report refers to the reporting/calendar year 2025. To enable a comparison of the figures, values from the financial years 2024 and 2023 are also presented for the majority of the key figures. The Annual Report is published annually. The 2025 Annual Report is to be published on March 27, 2026 (2024 Integrated Report: March 27, 2025). It addresses the main stakeholder groups of DB Group and covers all material economic, social and environmental aspects. All fully consolidated companies of DB Group (excluding discontinued operations) are included in the reporting. Deviations from this reporting scope or period are noted as such.
The data collection methods and calculation bases for the data in the Annual Report are based on relevant standards:
- European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS): As part of its Annual Report, DB Group begins reporting with reference to the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) from the 2025 financial year, which is not part of the audited consolidated financial statements. Our reporting with reference to the ESRS is based on ESRS Set 1 dated December 22, 2023, and in some cases already on the proposed adjustments as part of the technical opinion of the European Financial Reporting Advisory Group (EFRAG) on the draft simplified ESRS dated December 3, 2025. ESRS reporting for the 2025 financial year is, therefore, not based on a uniform ESRS basis, is not complete in the sense of ESRS and has not been audited by an auditing firm.
- EU Taxonomy: As part of our reporting with reference to the ESRS, we also disclose the “environmentally sustainable” share of our revenues, capital expenditures (CapEx) and operating expenses (OpEx) in accordance with the EU Taxonomy Regulation.
- UN Global Compact: The Annual Report also includes information on the implementation of the ten principles of the UN Global Compact (UNGC).
Sustainability statement in reference to the European Sustainability Reporting Standards
With this sustainability statement, DB Group begins voluntary reporting based on the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS), which is not part of the audited consolidated financial statements. Our reporting with reference to the ESRS is based on ESRS Set 1 dated December 22, 2023 and, in some cases, already on the proposed adjustments as part of the technical advice of the European Financial Reporting Advisory Group (EFRAG) on the draft of the simplified ESRS dated December 3, 2025:
- Preparation of the sustainability statement on the basis of ESRS Set 1.
- Application of the ESRS draft of December 3, 2025 for all disclosure requirements in ESRS 2 (the Minimum Disclosure Requirements or General Disclosure Requirements are reported in the topic standards depending on the ESRS basis of the chapter), the new disclosure requirements E1-2 (Identification of climate-related risks and scenario analysis) and E1-3 (Resilience in relation to climate change), the disclosure requirements for the topic of health and safety in S1 and all disclosure requirements for DB-specific topics. In the case of disclosure requirements prepared on the basis of ESRS Set 1, some datapoints were not reported that have been removed according to the ESRS draft of December 3, 2025.
- Absent (or incomplete) reporting of individual datapoints.