Deutsche equities boss plays for turnaround

Deutsche Bank AG’s global head of equities is seeking inspiration from a legendary baseball team as he looks to overturn a three-year rout of the business with a shrinking budget.

“We’re more like the Oakland A’s than the Yankees. It’s more of a Moneyball approach to bringing people in, and it’s working,” Peter Selman said in an interview, referring to the technique of building a winning team of underrated players rather than stars.

Selman, a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc partner, came out of retirement last year to revive Deutsche Bank’s flagging equities business, which has reported year-over-year declines in revenue for 12 straight quarters. On Friday, he named Ashley Wilson and Brad Kurtzman as co-heads of equities trading to oversee all product lines within the business, according to an internal memo.

Quantitative analysis

Moneyball is a reference to Michael Lewis’s book and the 2011 Hollywood movie that followed, chronicling how Billy Beane of the Oakland Athletics used quantitative analysis to find underrated players, with a budget dwarfed by what franchises such as the New York Yankees could afford to spend. Beane’s team went on to post a record 20-game winning streak in 2002.

Deutsche Bank CEO Christian Sewing similarly gave Selman a tightened budget to work with, as they seek to reverse a slump in the equities business from 2015. Since then, the unit has struggled with management changes, clients’ fears over the firm’s stability and a lack of volatility in markets. After taking over in April, the CEO announced a revised strategy that includes shrinking the equities business globally.

The firm was ranked the No 6 investment bank by global revenue at the end of 2017, according to Coalition Ltd. In equities, it wasn’t among the top five. Second-quarter stock trading revenue slipped 6 per cent to €540 million ($630 million; Dh2.31 billion).