City profiles
John Cryan Two years into his reign at Deutsche Bank, the bluff Yorkshireman charged with restructuring the stricken German bank – once the most feared operation of its kind in Europe – “is running out of time to revive its fortunes”, says Aimee Donnellan in The Sunday Times. A former accountant with Arthur Andersen, Cryan had spent most of his career “out of the spotlight” (with S.G. Warburg and then UBS) before joining Deutsche, where his attempted reforms aren’t universally popular. “As Barclays has found in the past, investment bankers and traders will don sackcloth and ashes only for so long.” One large investor has given Cryan just six months “to pump up profits”, warning that “if we don’t see improvement in the next two quarters, pressure will mount”. The clock is ticking.
It might have been tempting fate to launch a company called Boohoo, but the risk seems to have paid off for Carol Kane, says The Times. The co-founder of the “aggressively expanding online retailer”, which sells affordable fashion for 16- to 30-year-olds, netted nearly £11m last week, after selling around a tenth of her holding – it’s the first share sale she’s made since divvying up £240m with co-founder Mahmud Kamani when the business floated in 2014. A designer by trade, Kane made her name working for a Hong Kong company supplying retailers like Topshop, before teaming up with Kamani to launch Boohoo. Once described as “Manchester’s best kept secret”, the outfit has rapidly become a global enterprise, leaving Kane laughing all the way to the bank.