NEW YORK CITY—Deutsche Bank AG may partner with a private equity firm to offload about $2 billion in commercial real estate loans under the aegis of its Special Situations Group, Bloomberg reported Tuesday. A spokeswoman for the bank tells GlobeSt.com the firm has no comment.

Via the Special Situations Group, which was formed in 2004, the Frankfurt-based bank has been an active investor in distressed commercial mortgages and other real estate debt instruments. These have been acquired in the secondary market from other financial institutions and non-bank lenders globally.

In 2012, DB acquired a portfolio of loans with a face value of $911 million from Capmark Financial Group. Reuters reported at the time that the portfolio consisted of 57 loans on 65 properties, mostly performing, and that DB was said to have paid about 82 to 83 cents on the dollar based on the $930-million face value of the loans when the portfolio hit the market, although it did not disclose the price when it announced that it won the bidding for the Capmark loans. The largest of the loans, according to Reuters, was a $96.8-million mortgage on 26 golf courses owned by a joint venture between Parthenon Capital of Boston and Sequoia Golf Holdings of Peachtree City, GA.

Bloomberg reported Tuesday that DB, Germany's largest bank, intends to take advantage of rising commercial real estate values and investor appetite for higher-yielding debt. Additionally, financial institutions around the world have begun downsizing their businesses ahead of the implementation of the Volcker Rule, a provision of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act that restricts banks' ability to trade with their own money.

In a report following Tuesday's Bloomberg story, analysts at TheStreet.com gave DB a “sell” rating. “This is driven by several weaknesses, which we believe should have a greater impact than any strengths, and could make it more difficult for investors to achieve positive results compared to most of the stocks we cover,” the analysts wrote. “The company's weaknesses can be seen in multiple areas, such as its generally disappointing historical performance in the stock itself, deteriorating net income and disappointing return on equity.” The bank's stock ended trading on Tuesday at $33.36, declining 2.74% after the Bloomberg report.