Deutschebank is a hot mess of corruption because it became a Wall-Street insider and ceased, in principle, to be the German institution that it was.

The road to ruin was paved almost entirely by acquisitions of British and American investment banks and, eventually, a CEO from Wall Street.

The same happened to Commerzbank and, to a lesser extent Germany’s other large banks. The CEOs became wannabes in the American model.

I was able to see some of this up close. But the 2 biggest culprits for turning DB into the shithole that it is are Josef Ackermann’s ambition to be a player in the big-comp world of WallStreet and his hand-picked follower, Anshu Jain. Jain, whose entire career was on Wall Street and someone who absorbed all the worst lessons at the worst time there.

2012 2015 Anshu Jain co-CEO
2002 2012 Josef Ackermann CEO position created 2006
1997 2002 Rolf-Ernst Breuer: BT
1989 1997 Hilmar Kopper: DMG