John Cryan, a former finance chief at UBS who Deutsche Bank said on Sunday would become the bank's new chief executive, brings many qualities to the table, colleagues say.
Cryan is smart, clinical and, perhaps most important, knows how to make big banks swallow bitter pills.
In 2008, among the darkest days of the financial crisis, he took over as chief financial officer at UBS, which underwent a radical restructuring and went on to write off $50 billion.
"He is intellectually honest and disciplined," said Ken Moelis, chief executive of Moelis & Company, who worked closely with him at UBS. "He won't look at a problem and say it's not a problem."
Deutsche Bank announced on Sunday that its co-chief executives, Anshu Jain and Jürgen Fitschen, had resigned, responding in part to pressure from shareholders who had criticised the bank for its strategy, its lacklustre profits and its continuing legal woes. Investors have voiced concerns that the bank has not adequately tackled its legacy issues or balance sheet.
The resignation of Jain, 52, will take effect at the end of June. Fitschen, 66, will stay on for another year to ensure a smooth transition, Deutsche Bank said. Cryan will lead the bank with Fitschen until next year, then become its sole chief executive.
Jain was often criticised because he ran Deutsche Bank's investment bank before taking over the whole entity. It is the investment bank that has produced much of Deutsche Bank's current problems. Some questioned whether he was too close to the problems to fully address them.
In April, the bank agreed to pay $2.5 billion to the United States and British authorities to settle accusations that some employees had conspired to rig benchmark interest rates. Jain was not accused of playing any role in the matter, but the bank was criticised for not handling the case better.
Many hope that Cryan, a long-time financial institution banker, will bring a fresh perspective to the bank's balance sheet and strategy. "With John Cryan as CEO, we think that Deutsche is transitioning from one of the least credible management teams in investors' minds to one of the most highly regarded," Omar Fall, an analyst at Jefferies, wrote.
Davide Serra - a hedge fund manager in London, whose $2.5-billion fund invests in financial service stocks and credit - predicted Cryan would make significant changes.
"I would expect him to raise capital and shrink more aggressively the loss-making empire Anshu has built," he said.
Cryan was his first boss when they both worked at the London-based bank SG Warburg, Serra added, and he enjoyed learning from Cryan.
"He is a rational, cold, deep thinker and no show-off," Serra said. "The opposite of your stereotype trader and CEO of a big bank."
Cryan, a trained accountant, joined SG Warburg in 1987. He stayed there as it became part of UBS.
He also lived in Germany for a period of his banking career and speaks German, which should prove advantageous since Deutsche Bank is the country's largest bank.
Cryan was part of the financial services group banking team. He advised the Dutch bank ABN Amro on its defense against takeover efforts in 2007 and was a key relationship banker at Standard Chartered, where he worked on multiple acquisitions, including Manhattan Card from Chase Manhattan Bank in 2000 and Nakornthon Bank in Thailand in 1999. He was the bookrunner of the initial public offering on the Bank of China.
He left UBS in 2011, after rising to chief financial officer as well as chairman and chief executive for UBS Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The next year, he became head of Europe at Temasek, the vast sovereign wealth fund of Singapore, where he stayed for two years.
Cryan will be coming to Deutsche Bank with knowledge of its business. In 2013, he joined Deutsche Bank's supervisory board, acting as chairman of the audit committee and as a member of the risk committee.
Jain's departure came as a surprise, in spite of all the bank's woes. The supervisory board had recently granted Jain more power to oversee another reorganisation intended to simplify the bank and save euro 3.5 billion, or about $3.9 billion.
That plan was not well received.
"DB's new strategy could have provided an inflection point for the stock - but it disappointed on a number of levels," wrote Huw van Steenis, head of European banks equity research at Morgan Stanley. He added that investors wanted to see that the bank had the potential to grow, sustainable dividends, a clear business strategy, an ability to execute the strategy and a smart positioning for the recovery.
"Simply put, Deutsche is not the Goldman Sachs of Europe," van Steenis added.
© 2015 The New York Times News Service
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