Rolf Breuer, Deutsche Bank's chairman, said because he won't know how much the acquisition of Bankers Trust will cost at least until the transaction has closed, most, if not all, of the proceeds of the global offering will be allocated to the takeover of the US bank.

At last month's annual press conference, the bank said that about four billion marks of the total would go toward financing the acquisition, and the remainder would be used to fuel further growth in Europe.

When the Bankers Trust deal was announced in November, Deutsche Bank said it would cost $10.1 billion.

The global offering began on Friday and will last until April 20. "We want the six billion marks for Bankers Trust," Mr. Breuer said Monday."It could be less than that, but there are many factors that can change." An example of the sorts of surprises that can arise occurred last month when Bankers Trust acknowledged that it is to pay a $60 million criminal fine stemming from an accounting scheme several years ago to improve the appearance of its books.

Breuer said factors such as miscalculating country or market risks, the returns from sales of certain units, as well as the effect on capital of paying off goodwill can alter the amount that is necessary.

Whatever doesn't go toward the acquisition costs would probably be used to shore up the bank's position in Europe, Breuer said, as exemplified by the bank's purchase of a 9.9 per cent stake in BIG Bank Gdanski, the fifth-largest in Poland, with 5.8 billion marks of assets.

Although Deutsche Bank established its own subsidiary in Poland in 1995, called Polska SA, it has been thwarted since then in its attempts to acquire government stakes in several Polish lenders. In BIG Bank Gdanski,Deutsche Bank said it has found a platform for further growth in Poland, particularly in catering to the retail and investment needs of individual cus tomers. Up to now, the German bank conducted only corporate banking in Poland.

Deutsche Bank also indicated that the stake probably will be increased, and analysts said the bank probably has a full takeover in mind.The Polish bank has been in play for a couple of weeks. Bank Rozwoju Eksportu SA, in which Commerzbank AG holds a 48 per cent stake, disclosed recently that it had taken a stake of slightly more than 5 per cent in BIG Bank Gdanski.

Deutsche Bank has increased capital many times before, but this will be its largest and most important transaction. To reach its 500,000 private shareholders -- the most of any financial institution, according to Deutsche Bank -- it has launched a series of advertising campaigns in print and broadcast media. Breuer will take part in the roadshow, which he estimated will cost more than ten million marks. Asof lastmonth, about 60 per cent of the offering for existing shareholders was completed, the bank said. The remaining two billion mark tranche will be marketed to institutional shareholders globally.

"Management is talking in confident terms about producing the income that they've hoped for," said Fiona Bengtsson, a director of Prudential Portfolio Managers, who attended the bank's presentation Monday in London.

"And they need to, in order to regain credibility after some rather extravagant flourishes in the market in recent years," she said, referring to the bank's costly, and ultimately unsuccessful, build-up of its investment bank in the US.