City jobs at risk after Deutsche axes UK boss

THOUSANDS of City jobs could be on the block at Deutsche Bank after it fired chief executive John Cryan.

The yorkshireman was forced to quit by his own board amid concerns that his already-brutal programme of cuts does not go far enough.

He has been replaced by insider Christian Sewing, who has hinted that the troubled German lender’s once-mighty investment bank will be slashed further.

The investment bank accounts for the vast majority of Deutsche’s 8,600 UK staff – meaning London roles are likely to be in the firing line.

Sewing, a 47-year-old father of four who was previously head of Deutsche’s audit department and then the retail bank, has no background in investment banking.

He is expected to abandon the dreams of a global finance empire and pay more attention instead to provincial German lending. In a memo to staff, he warned changes are coming in the corporate and investment arm.

Cryan, 57, was forced out following a breakdown in relations with the bank’s chairman Paul Achleitner.

Cryan took over Deutsche in 2015 after a period of wild overexpansion which saw it vie with Wall Street to conquer international finance.

But this concealed a host of bad behaviour which came to light on Cryan’s watch. Since the start of 2017, the lender has coughed up £5.9bn for misselling US mortgage debt; £505m for money laundering in Russia; and £122m for failing to properly monitor traders’ online conversations. Cryan planned to axe 15,000 jobs and had a reputation for tough talk, warning as many as 50,000 more roles could go and taking particular aim at accountants who he said ‘spend a lot of time basically being an abacus’.