Former Deutsche CEO to get €9m
Former Deutsche Bank CEO John Cryan can expect a payoff of about €9m after he was shunted out of his post, the lender’s internal rules show.
Former Deutsche Bank CEO John Cryan can expect a payoff of about €9m after he was shunted out of his post, the lender’s internal rules show.
When a board member leaves before their contract is up, “the severance payment, as a rule, is two annual compensation amounts”, based on pay for the previous financial year and expected pay for the current year, Deutsche’s 2017 annual report says.
Cryan took home a salary of €3.4m in 2017, while there has so far been no indication of his pay for 2018. That could give him the right to about €6.8m in severance pay, plus the €1.9m the bank reported in his retirement account.
On Tuesday, the Frankfurt institution declined to comment on Cryan’s “golden parachute”. He is set to leave the bank at the end of April — well ahead of the end of his contract in May 2020 — after supervisory board chairman Paul Achleitner pushed through a replacement at the weekend. The new CEO will be 47-year-old career Deutsche banker Christian Sewing.
Cryan waived any bonus payment for 2017 after the bank booked its third annual loss in a row. In an interview with newspaper Frankfurt Allgemeine Zeitung on Tuesday, Achleitner said Cryan had “rendered great service” to Deutsche Bank.
The British CEO neutralised the bank’s worst legal threats, in part by paying billions in fines and compensation and cutting operating costs. He strengthened Deutsche’s capital foundations with an €8bn share issue in 2017 and floated asset management division DWS on the stock market in March.
Nevertheless, Achleitner said, “his weak point was the speed at which the board took decisions and then pushed through their implementation”.
Deutsche has yet to return to profitability. The share price has slumped more than 50% in the past two years.
News of Sewing’s appointment briefly pushed up the shares on Monday morning, but Tuesday saw the bank losing 1.1% on the DAX index to trade at €11.36 by mid-morning.