The Cologne public prosecutor's office is not only investigating five former board members, but also an incumbent board member of Deutsche Bank in the Cum-Ex complex for illegal stock transactions.

This is the answer given by the legal director Stefan Simon to shareholders' questions at the general meeting on Thursday.

According to information from the FAZ, it is likely to be the Chief Risk Officer Stuart Lewis, because he is responsible for large loans to customers such as the Ballance Group, which operates Cum-Ex.

Deutsche Bank did not want to comment on the information that Lewis was being investigated.

Hanno Mußler

Editor in business.

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    Legal director Simon made it clear that Deutsche Bank regrets today that it has helped customers with tax fraud with cum-ex transactions, for example with loans.

    Simon no longer expects liability notices from her role as custodian bank for short sellers of stocks, for which the Deutsche Bank is accused by the Warburg Bank.

    There is “no open topic with the financial administration”.

    Praise for renovation

    Previously, unlike in previous years, the Management Board and Supervisory Board of Deutsche Bank had received a lot of praise and little criticism from shareholders. Klaus Nieding from the German Protection Association for Securities Possession complimented the chairman of the board, Christian Sewing, for the restructuring program he decided on in July 2019: "You delivered convincingly earlier than expected." Stayed above breakeven in every quarter and thus “sustainably profitable” - a goal that Sewing has only been pursuing as the third phase of the renovation since December 2020 with a view to 2022.

    Many shareholders are critical of the election of EY as the auditor of Deutsche Bank, after this company audited the balance sheets of the insolvent Wirecard for years.

    The chairman of the supervisory board, Paul Achleitner, announced that he would like to rewrite the mandate.

    In addition, some Deutsche Bank shareholders like the fund manager Alexandra Annecke from Union Investment criticized "a blatant disparity between bonuses and dividends".

    Who gets how much bonuses

    In fact, 684 employees at Deutsche Bank earned more than one million euros in 2020, while at European competitors HSBC and BNP Paribas the number of income millionaires among the employees is only half or even only a third as large.

    One shareholder criticized the swelling of the bonus pot for investment bankers by 29 percent to 1.9 billion euros as disrespectful to the other employees. The shareholders who have not received a dividend for two years would have to pay the bonuses. Sewing defended the leap in variable remuneration: "Overall, our business results would have justified an even higher variable remuneration." However, in line with the supervisors' expectations, the bank had "applied a measured approach". Sewing emphasized that in view of the competition for talent, it was “necessary and correct” to remunerate employees “in line with the market and according to their outstanding performance”: “This is the only way we can become sustainably profitable again in the long term.”