Unlike in previous years, the shareholders of Deutsche Bank's Management Board and Supervisory Board praised a lot and criticized little at the general meeting on Thursday.

Klaus Nieding from the German Protection Association for Securities Possession complimented Christian Sewing, Chairman of the Board of Management, for the restructuring program he decided on in July 2019: "You delivered convincingly earlier than expected." Nieding praised that Deutsche Bank was in the Corona year 2020 after five consecutive years of losses remained 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 the year 2022.

Hanno Mußler

Editor in business.

  • Follow I follow

    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.

    “The board of directors of Deutsche Bank is also paid above average compared to other European banks, while profitability is below average,” said Annecke.

    Her colleague Andreas Thomae from Deka Investment also called the Executive Board remuneration, which rose from 36 million euros in 2019 to 50 million euros, "too much in a year in which the bank earned just one billion euros".

    Nieding and Annecke demanded a dividend for 2021.

    The board of directors has promised them.

    Praise for live posts

    Nieding, Annecke and Thomae were among the seven shareholder representatives who were able to ask live questions about previously submitted and answered questions in five-minute contributions at the virtual general meeting. Deutsche Bank received praise for this too. “This involvement makes the Annual General Meeting of Deutsche Bank unique, they solved that well,” said Nieding. Paul Achleitner, who does not seek re-election as chairman of the supervisory board at the end of his term of office in May 2022, stated the costs of the virtual meeting at around 3 million euros, around 1.5 million euros less than for the usual face-to-face event. Mayree Clark is looking for the new chairman of the supervisory board. Achleitner transferred the chairmanship of the responsible nomination committee to Supervisory Board member Clark in July 2020.The CEO of Deutsche Börse, Theodor Weimer, and Frank Witter, VW CFO, who was newly elected to the supervisory board on Thursday, are candidates for Achleitner's successor.

    Many shareholders also wondered whether the earnings growth achieved by Deutsche Bank in 2020 of 32 percent to 9.3 billion euros in the capital market business was "sustainable" or driven by the capital requirements of companies in the pandemic and thus "cyclical". When asked, Sewing and CFO James von Moltke specified that more than half of the increases in earnings in currency and bond trading and almost entirely in the debt capital issuing business were viewed as permanent. For 2022, however, they were planning to earn less than 800 million euros in capital market business than in 2020. "We consider this forecast to be conservative," said Sewing. The income was already sufficient for the group return target of 8 percent set for 2022.

    But the costs should still fall and the burdens from the reduction of non-core business should be eliminated. Unexpected annual cost increases due to higher contributions for the deposit insurance of the private German banks after the Greensill bankruptcy of 70 million euros and for the European resolution fund of 300 million euros should be compensated by a closer integration of corporate and capital market business.