It’s been one week. Seven days since the disappointment that was Deutsche Bank’s 2016 bonus day. Not only were performance bonuses all but wiped out for anyone above associate vice president level, but the remaining ‘firm-wide’ bonus pool was reportedly only half what everyone was expecting. Oh, and the sparsely distributed Deutsche retention bonuses come with some harsh conditions.
In the circumstances, it might be supposed that all kinds of people would have left Deutsche by now. In fact, the exits have been surprisingly modest. David Steckl, Deutsche’s co-head of structured rates sales in the U.S., quit last week for UBS. Now we understand that Said Boujnah and Igor Akulov have also left for destinations unknown.
Boujnah was a London-based director and head of FX and rates structuring for CEEMA & Latin America. Akulov was a New York-based managing director in emerging markets credit and rates derivatives trading. Deutsche Bank declined to comment on their disappearances.
The departures will leave Deutsche with holes in its rates team which under-performed the market in 2016 after a strong performance the previous year. Deutsche CEO John Cryan promised to bring the fun back to Deutsche when he announced an $8.5bn rights issue earlier this month. However, the German bank is still cutting costs and appears to be focusing on equities and the investment banking division (IBD) as opposed to fixed income trading. Earlier this week, it promoted Thomas Patrick, global head of equities, to run the U.S. business.
Both Deutsche’s equities trading business and its fixed income trading business under-performed the market in revenue terms last year.
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Photo credit: HIO Aachen 2012 by Deutsche Bank is licensed under CC BY 2.0.