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Christian Sewing, chief executive officer of Deutsche Bank AG, pauses as Germanys biggest bank announces full year earnings in Frankfurt, Germany, on Friday. Feb. 1, 2019. Deutsche Banks revenue contracted for an eighth straight quarter in the final months of last year, complicating Chief Executive Officer Christian Sewings plan to turn around the lender through cost cutting. Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Krisztian Bocsi | Bloomberg | Getty Images
When asked if there would be any personnel consequences, Sewing said only that he called the “colleagues” involved and discussed the incident with them.
“I assume in any case that the two colleagues will not forget my telephone call,” Sewing said, suggesting he gave them a tongue-lashing.
Deutsche Bank announced Sunday that it was shutting down its global stock trading business and slashing 18,000 positions in a massive restructuring to improve the troubled bank’s profitability.
Deutsche once sought to compete with large American banks on Wall Street, a strategy that began with its $10 billion acquisition of Bankers Trust in the late 1990s.
But the German bank’s aggressive and ambitious strategy to become a global power house ultimately backfired. Deutsche has been severely weakened by a series of costly scandals related to business practices in the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis as well as other alleged wrongdoing.
Deutsche reached a $7.2 billion settlement with the U.S. Justice Department in January 2017 for allegedly misleading investors in the sale of mortgage-backed securities. The bank was also slapped with a $630 million fine over allegations of Russian money laundering.
Those penalties came two years after the bank paid a $2.5 billion fine to U.S. and U.K. regulators for allegedly participating in a scheme to rig interest rates.
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