Despite its current challenges, Deutsche Bank is not struggling as much as current speculation suggests, Mark Yusko, CEO of Morgan Creek Capital Management, told CNBC on Friday.
Not only does the German banking powerhouse have a lot of capital cushion, it's not holding a lot of terrible assets that were seen in the United States during the financial crisis, Yusko said on "Squawk Box."
Deutsche Bank's stock has been cut in half this year, with losses accelerating in recent weeks on concerns over a capital crunch in the face of a proposed settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice that could reach $14 billion and on reports of hedge fund selling.
The German lender's shares hit another all-time low in European trading Friday, but recovered late in the session to end higher. After record lows Thursday on Wall Street, Deutsche Bank's stock that trades in the U.S. was sharply higher midday Friday.
Any comparison of the German institution to investment banks in the U.S. is "silly," Yusko said, arguing that heading into the 2008 crisis Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns were subject to significantly more distress and funding imbalance than Deutsche Bank today.
"The U.S. banks were so highly levered at the time, which they shouldn't have been, and things started to unravel because they were bad assets, they were bad loans. I don't think you have that problem in Germany today," he said.
Deutsche Bank won't likely have big woes, he said, and may end up being a solid long-term buy. But where the German bank may struggle, he acknowledged, is getting back on its feet in the industry, since "banking is a confidence game."
Credit analyst Filippo Alloatti at Hermes Fund Managers echoed the importance of confidence, telling CNBC's "Squawk on the Street" on Friday that there's a "psychological limit" in Germany over how low Deutsche Bank's shares can drop before investors start panicking and consumers start potentially pulling their deposits.
While he doesn't see Deutsche Bank's $252 billion of liquidity as an immediate problem, Eric Wasserstrom, managing director of Guggenheim Securities, warned of the potential volatility that comes with holding high amounts of liquid assets.
"Capital, or the erosion of capital, is something that kills a bank slowly; illiquidity is something that kills it overnight," Wasserstrom told "Squawk on the Street."
When it comes to needing to recapitalize, Wasserstrom drew a contrast between methods in the United States, where during the financial crisis the government infused banks with capital and forced them to raise common equity to replace those funds, and Europe, where banks are typically expected to fend for themselves.
"In continental Europe, most of the expectation was about forbearing for these institutions to earn their way out of the problem, which they've clearly never been able to do."
As for U.S. banks, Morgan Creek's Yusko believes they will struggle for a long time due to low global growth overall. He also said American banks have been "Dodd-Franked." Referring to the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, he said they've been regulated excessively and turned into utilities.
Morgan Creek, with about $2.9 billion in assets under management, is primarily a hedge fund allocator, which means it invests in other funds on behalf of clients. The firm also makes its own bets on certain stocks.