In a move that will increase Deutsche Bank's holding in domestic rival Deutsche Postbank from just below 30 percent to over 50 percent, Germany's biggest bank by assets said on Friday that it had successfully won majority control of Postbank.

According to a statement by Deutsche, at least 70 percent of Postbank's minority shareholders had given a go ahead to Deutsche's September-announced offer of _25 per share. The Postbank acquisition will add _110 billion of retail deposits to Deutsche, taking its total retail deposits to _260 billionn.

A majority share in Postbank will mark Deutsche's notable advancement towards its objective of reinforcing its investment banking operations with a larger share of the German retail market; chiefly with the addition of Postbank's 14 million customers to its 10 million German private clients.

Noting that the deal will place it among the five bigwig European banks by the amount of net revenues from domestic retail business, Deutsche revealed that the Postbank acquisition will be funded from the proceeds of its _10.2 billion capital-raising move, which was also announced in September.

Welcoming the Posstbank acquisition, Anshu Jain - head of Deutsche's investment bank and a likely successor to the CEO Josef Ackermann, said that a "universal banking" model will apparently overcome "pure play" investment banking.