Banker bonus onus
Deutsche $ forfeit
At Deutsche Bank, a bonus deferred is a bonus denied.
Eleven current and former top executives at the struggling bank agreed to “voluntarily” forfeit $44.9 million in bonuses, stemming from their role in managing Deutsche Bank during the period leading upto the 2007 financial crisis and after, the company said Thursday.
Theexecutives, whoweren’t named, were members of the bank’s management board. Previously, DeutscheBankhad frozen the bonusesfor bankers who were part of that board, including formerco-CEOsAnshu Jain and Jürgen Fitschen, and former CEO Josef Ackermann.
NowledbyCEOJohnCryan, Deutsche Bank has been hit with so many fines during the year that it’s struggled to pay the bonuses for all but the topperforming executives.
In December, The Post first reported that most employees would forgo a bonus, and that bigwigs would see any incentives paid out over six years. The bank ended up slashing the bonus pool for 80 percent of employees.
Since 2015, the bank has been hit with a $7.2 billion settle- ment with the Justice Department over its role in the financial crisis, $10 billion for helping Russians launder money and $2.5 billion for manipulating interest rates.
In response, Deutsche Bank said it asked top executives to pay up.
“The reason was that Deutsche Bank saw itself confronted with a number of supervisory investigations and regulatory penalties, whose causes originated from the period before the 2007 financial crisis in some cases,” the bank said.
While an investigation found that the individuals weren’t personally liable, “they have nonetheless voluntarily waived their entitlement to a total of 38.4 million euro as an act of solidarity with Deutsche Bank,” the company said.
Separately, the bank announced a 10 percent drop in revenue, in part because slow markets led to a drop in trading. Overall, profit surged due to heavy cost-cutting.
“Despite the significant improvement, this level of profitability falls short of our longerterm aspirations,” Cryan said in a statement. “Revenues were not as universally strong as wewould have liked.”