Management changes expected at Deutsche Bank

Anshu Jain, the incoming co-chief executive of Deutsche Bank, is moving quickly to put in place his own management team in advance of his assuming joint control of the German banking giant on June 1.

The longtime head of Deutsche’s profit engine — its corporate and investment banking business — intends to appoint two investment bankers to replace him, according to a person with direct knowledge of the decision. They are Colin Fan, from the emerging-markets division of the bank, who will oversee sales and trading, and Robert Rankin, a former UBS executive who was the bank’s Asia head and now will lead the origination and advisory businesses.

The investment bank changes come as Deutsche takes steps to move from the Josef Ackermann era to one that will be led by Jain and his co-chief, Jürgen Fitschen. Ackermann, following a drawn-out process over who should replace him, will step down as chief executive and permanently leave the bank in June.

At a meeting of the bank’s supervisory board’s nominating committee on Tuesday, it was also decided that two members of Deutsche’s management board, Hugo Banziger and Hermann-Josef Lamberti, would leave, said this person who was not authorised to speak publicly.

Replacing them will be Stephan Leithner and two bankers with close ties to Jain — William Broeksmit and Henry Ritchotte. Broeksmit will become chief risk officer for the bank, focusing solely on the amount of risk that the bank takes and is exposed to. Ritchotte, currently chief operating officer of the investment bank, broadens his brief to become chief operating officer of Deutsche as a whole.

Both men are Jain acolytes, who go back 20 years to when Jain was a derivatives salesman at Merrill Lynch.

Their promotion to the bank’s powerful management board is a sign that, while Jain will be co-head of the bank in name, in practice significant power will rest with him.

Leithner, who is said to be close to Fitschen, will be chief executive of the bank’s European business and take on areas of the bank’s legal and human resources departments.

At the meeting in Frankfurt, Jain and Fitschen made clear that they were committed to the universal banking model at Deutsche, not an unimportant point in light of the calls by some analysts in the United States for large banks like JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup to separate their investment banking functions.

The co-heads also said they would establish a separate asset and wealth management unit, to be headed by Michele Faissola, an investment banker.

Deutsche has so far avoided some of the larger layoffs suffered by its peers even though its profit was dented by market turmoil last year. People inside the bank say that as of now there is no talk of another round of downsizing to come once the new team takes over.

Source: Financial Express