German Bank: broken promises – comment – SPIEGEL ONLINE

Anshu Jain and Jürgen Fitschen will promise a lot again. If the two heads of Deutsche Bank to face the shareholders at the annual general meeting this Thursday, they will talk about customer focus and global presence, of the realignment and strategic options. However, many listeners will not believe the bosses. Too often they have been disappointed in the past few years. The German Bank is now so bad there as seldom before: charge billion punishments the image and the bank’s earnings. In the dispute over the new strategy, the leadership has so divided, that private customers Board Rainer Neske hinschmeißt – one of the few who was not involved in scandals.

The experiment with the leading duo Anshu Jain and Jürgen Fitschen has failed. Three years ago the two were lined up in order to make much unlike her predecessor Josef Ackermann. The Bank should be better – economically successful, morally clean. The new boss promised investors high returns and the citizens of a cultural change. Neither of these promises have Jain and Fitschen really respected.

The investors turn away disappointed because the profits have shrunk to Peanuts-level (see chart). This is reflected in the share price, which has lagged since taking office the new bosses behind the middle of 2012 all international competitors. Even the chronically ailing Commerzbank has suspended the big neighbor from Frankfurt in this regard.

The recently announced new strategy does not seem to convince investors. Apparently hardly anyone believes that a new cost-cutting program and the sale of Postbank sufficient to bring the derailed group back on track. Influential shareholder representatives are already calling for the conversion of the leadership.

And the cultural change? Despite major announcements you can at least doubt that it ever existed. It still is the designed for the quick profit culture of London and New York investment banker that characterizes the Bank. A culture that is likely to be strengthened again by the new strategy.

The salaries of many investment bankers are still absurdly high. Only for the past year 2057 the top people of the division received more than two billion euros.

In addition, about one billion Euro German Bank pressed before the clean working up their inglorious past – for approximately 600,000 shareholders against half as a whole remains just left.. Most recently, the Financial Services has complained massively about the lack of cooperation, which showed in the investigation of the so-called Libor scandal over manipulated interest rates the Bank. The German regulator BaFin therefore already went hard with the group to task.

The Bank, it seems, are always just as much to how to prove it – and even then still speaks of individual cases where long a system can be seen. That will probably remain so, as long as the financial institution of people will be implemented, which had for many years responsible for the areas of the bank scandal. One of them, the Jain Other recurring Alan Cloete, now has to go though it. This was decided not hurry the night before the annual general meeting of the Supervisory Board. But Jain himself is even strengthened within the Executive Board. The former head of investment banking is the future also officially responsible for the Group’s strategy.

“The behavior of these people was reprehensible,” Jain recently added regarding the Libor manipulation of his bank, “and I was their leader.” An unusually open admission of guilt -. That is so far remained without personal consequences

Vote

How sick is the German bank?

The calls for a withdrawal of German bank chiefs Jain and Fitschen are louder, the two stands on Thursday a turbulent shareholders’ meeting before. If the dual leadership failed?