Daniel Roland/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesJürgen Fitschen, left, and Anshu Jain, the co-chief executives of Deutsche Bank, spoke in Frankfurt on Tuesday.
The new chief executives of Deutsche Bank acknowledged on Tuesday that the bank was weighed down by relatively weak capital reserves, excessive dependence on investment banking and a tarnished reputation as they announced an overhaul to address these flaws.
Three months after taking over from Josef Ackermann, the bank’s longtime chief executive, Jürgen Fitschen and Anshu Jain, who are sharing the top job, moved to put their mark on the largest German bank.
They presented an unusually frank assessment of Deutsche Bank’s shortcomings and promised to take remedial steps, including delaying bonuses for top managers.
They also said the bank planned to cut costs by 4.5 billion euros ($5.8 billion) a year by 2015.
“Tremendous mistakes have been made,” Mr. Jain said at a news conference in Frankfurt. “We can see times have changed and we need to change and change rapidly.”
The presentation came a day before the European Commission was scheduled to present a proposal for a banking union that would shift supervision of institutions like Deutsche Bank from German regulators to the European Central Bank.
The plan presented by Mr. Jain and Mr. Fitschen on Tuesday was partly a response to the pressure banks were experiencing from tougher regulations, as well as from investigations into manipulation of money-market rates and other wrongdoing.
Mr. Jain and Mr. Fitschen vowed to push through a change in Deutsche Bank culture that would include tougher sanctions for wrongdoing. “We’re in an industry where a small group of people can do irreparable damage,” Mr. Jain said. “We will not stand by and let that happen.”
Deutsche Bank is among the banks accused of manipulating the London interbank offered rate, or Libor, which is used to set rates on trillions of dollars of financial contracts.
Mr. Jain said the bank was taking the investigation into Libor rate-fixing very seriously, but repeated previous assertions that any wrongdoing was the work of a small group of people and that no members of the management board were implicated.
Mr. Jain, former chief of Deutsche Bank’s investment bank, said the business was simply not as profitable as it once was and that highly paid employees would have to accept more modest compensation.
The top 150 managers are to receive no bonuses at all for five years, he said, to encourage them to avoid taking excessive risks in the name of short-term gains. They would lose their bonuses if profits fell or they committed wrongdoing.
Addressing a common criticism of the bank, Mr. Jain said that Deutsche Bank’s capital reserves, while within regulatory limits, were lower than those of competitors. He vowed to raise the buffers to the same level as rivals by early next year and significantly higher by 2015.
The banking industry has shrunk since the beginning of the financial crisis and will shrink further, Mr. Fitschen said, requiring Deutsche Bank to cut costs and reduce the amount of money it has at risk. The bank had previously announced the elimination of 900 jobs, mostly in investment banking. On Tuesday the bank said it would set up a unit for noncore assets that would be sold.
Mr. Jain said that, while he was convinced the euro would survive, the economy in the euro zone was likely to grow slowly in the next several years. The bank will seek growth in Asia and the United States, he said.
Mr. Fitschen added: “We can’t deny that in the course of the crisis margins have fallen and funding has become more expensive. That demands answers on our part that sometimes will be painful.”
Article source: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/09/11/deutsche-bank-chiefs-outline-overhaul/?partner=rss&emc=rss
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