Shareholders' Rebuke Pressures Deutsche Bank CEOs to Perform

By Eyk Henning 

FRANKFURT-- Deutsche Bank AG's co-chief executives Anshu Jain and Jürgen Fitschen face intensified pressure to quickly present details of their strategy for turning the German giant around after a stinging rebuke from shareholders at Thursday's annual meeting.

Only 61% of the investors present at the AGM voted in approval of the management team's work. One year ago the figure was 89%.

Many investors said Thursday they had lost trust in Deutsche Bank executives because they failed to achieve promised financial targets and the bank also faces costly lawsuits.

The bank last month paid a fine of $2.5 billion to settle U.S. and British charges that it manipulated interest rates.

Deutsche Bank shares traded down 2.56% at EUR28.90 Friday afternoon, continuing a slide since Messrs. Jain and Fitschen presented fundamentals of their new strategy late last month.

Many investors on Thursday criticized the CEOs for setting profitability targets for 2020, which shareholders said was too far in the future. Investors also said the plan's goal of cutting costs by EUR3.5 billion ($3.89 billion) lacked detail and credibility.

The bank has pledged to flesh out details of its plan within 90 days, which means by late July. Investors were hungry for information sooner.

The spotlight now narrows on Mr. Jain. In a surprise reshuffle of the management board late on Wednesday ahead of the AGM, he was made responsible for implementing the cost savings and the new strategy.

Deutsche Bank's Chairman Paul Achleitner told The Wall Street Journal last week that the management team had to successfully implement the new strategy.

Mr. Jain faces an uphill battle overcoming skepticism among investors and analysts, Thursday's vote indicates.

Still, some analysts predict Mr. Jain can deliver. J.P. Morgan analyst Kian Abouhossein met with Mr. Jain following the strategy presentation and said in a research note "we believe management has a clear road map that will be outlined within three months" regarding cost savings.

A second point of investor criticism is the pace of cultural change at the bank, which has pledged to expunge an ethos that allowed illegal activities to take place. Some investors said Thursday that Mr. Jain should also step down because he was head of the investment bank at the time traders sought to rig interest-rate benchmarks. Deutsche Bank's investment bank is at the center of its legal woes.

"Mr. Jain, are you the solution to the problem or part of it?" asked Hans-Martin Buhlmann from the shareholder association VIP.

Mr. Jain acknowledged that he was the "leader" of the investment bank and therefore bears responsibility for its misconduct. But his way of showing responsibility, he said, to remain, clean up the bank and ensure "this never happens again."

Convincing wary investors he is the right man for the job appears increasingly challenging for Mr. Jain and his colleagues.

"This week has seen Deutsche Bank shareholders mount a contentious vote of no confidence against the senior management of the business as they question their ability to uphold the reputation of the bank over the long term," said Alison Esse, a managing director of The Storytellers, a change consultancy.

She added that the real problem with changing a corporate culture is that there is often a disconnect between the CEOs' external narrative and a company's internal ethos. The external line is often along the lines of, "we recognize the need to change and are changing" but the internal narrative is more along the lines of, "this is the way we do things around here to make the bank money." The two are often hard to reconcile, she said.

Write to Eyk Henning at [e-mail]

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