A New CEO Plans Big Cuts to Mend Deutsche Bank
Christian Sewing knows how to bring down expenses, but some say he lacks a grand vision.
Sewing at the bank’s annual general meeting in Frankfurt on May 24.
Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg
As chief of Deutsche Bank AG’s retail division, Christian Sewing earned a reputation as an unapologetic cost-cutter who closed hundreds of branches, reduced staff by 7 percent—3,100 positions—over two years, and sold operations in Poland and Portugal. Today, as the company’s chief executive officer, he’s following a similar playbook. But there’s far more at stake as he faces restive shareholders dismayed by more than $10 billion in losses over the last three years.
Since April, when he was appointed CEO of the battered bank, Sewing has cut an additional 1,700 jobs, told bankers they can no longer buy first-class train tickets, eliminated daily office fruit bowls, and is planning to shrink the New York office 30 percent and move away from Wall Street. It’s part of a pledge Sewing made to trim overhead at least 8 percent by 2019. “We’ll have to make progress on costs,” he said at an August banking conference in Frankfurt. “It’s about what we can control ourselves: making the business profitable.”