Deutsche Bank's writedowns are the third-highest as a proportion of the securities unit's revenue among the eight biggest investment banks that already reported earnings, behind Merrill Lynch and UBS. Sales and trading revenue, which accounted for almost half the bank's total last year, slumped 62 percent after 1.56 billion euros in writedowns and trading losses in fixed-income and equities. The bank also wrote down loans to fund buyouts by 603 million euros, net of fees, leaving it with leveraged finance commitments totaling 41.4 billion euros at the end of September. The investment banking unit, run by Anshu Jain and Michael Cohrs, recorded a loss of 179 million euros in the quarter, compared with a profit of 1.03 billion euros in the year-earlier period. Pretax profits at the consumer banking, asset management and transaction banking units rose 35 percent to a combined 832 million euros. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=awgHq2ikM8Ts&refer=home Better then expected...