Deutsche orders managers back to office

DEUTSCHE BANK has become the latest big company to tackle working from home, ordering managers back to the office four days a week.

The German investment bank, which employs about 6,000 people in London, has told staff they will need to be in the office at least two-thirds of the time. More senior employees will need to be in four days a week.

The new rules, which will come into force in June, will also ban workers from working from home on Friday followed by Monday in an apparent crackdown on employees t aking unofficial long weekends. A spokesman for the financial services giant said: “The bank remains committed to our hybrid working model, which has been received extremely positively by staff.”

It added that its “new guidelines will ensure consistency across the bank and strengthen senior leadership presence in the office, which remains the primary place of work”.

The move follows stricter rules on home working from competitors.

Goldman Sachs launched a campaign against staff who failed to attend the office five days a week last summer, while Bank of America sent “letters of e ducation” to staff in J a nuary threatening disciplinary action for those who failed to meet their office attendance requirements.

JP Morgan boss Jamie Dimon has said that working from home “doesn’t really work for creativity and spontaneity”.

The Deutsche Bank move came on the day it was revealed that Germany’s financial regulator had threatened the bank with fines for failing to fix problems with its anti-money laundering controls.

It follows long-running concerns over anti-money laundering shortcomings that Christian Sewing, the bank’s chief executive, had pledged to solve after becoming chief executive in 2018.