The former co-CEO of Deutsche Bank, Anshu Jain, has died, according to media reports.

Five years after he was diagnosed with colon cancer, he succumbed to the disease at the age of 59, his family said in a public statement.

Deutsche Bank described Jain as a formative figure in the development of international capital markets business.

Philip Krohn

Editor in business, responsible for "People and Business".

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From 2012 to 2015, Jain managed Germany's largest private bank together with Jürgen Fitschen before he lost the post because, in the opinion of the supervisory board, he was too focused on investment banking.

At that time he received the weakest result in a board election in the history of the bank from the shareholders.

Most recently, he was President of New York-based financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald since 2017.

"It is with deep sadness that our beloved husband, son and father, Anshu Jain, passed away last night," Bloomberg said in a family statement.

Few people survived a colon cancer diagnosis like Jain for as long as it did, it said.

Willpower, new research results and self-sacrificing nurses would have given him more years.

The Indian quickly found success in Anglo-Saxon investment banks

Jain was born in the Indian state of Rahasthan and belonged to the Jain religious community. He was married to his wife for more than a quarter of a century.

At Deutsche Bank, after stints at Kidder Peabody & Co. and Merrill Lynch, he was one of the leading investment bankers from the mid-1990s, supporting the bank's focus on riskier businesses.

Before the financial crisis, this unit was responsible for ensuring that the bank achieved its ambitious return targets.

But that was also the basis for countless legal disputes and major risk positions that became apparent in the course of the global financial crisis and then had to be reduced.

According to Alexander Wynaendts, the chairman of the supervisory board of Deutsche Bank, he helped expand the bank's position in global business with companies.

"Today, this is not only of strategic importance for Deutsche Bank, but for Europe as a financial center as a whole," he was quoted as saying.

He was considered a brilliant and quick thinker who could grasp complex issues.

"He deeply impressed many of us with his energy and loyalty to our bank," said CEO Christian Sewing.

But in a phase in which the re-regulation severely restricted business models after the wobbles in the banking world from 2007, he was accused of having a lack of a sense for further development.

In the three years at the helm of Deutsche Bank there was little time for a strategic realignment, Jain remained on the defensive and had to correct problematic business practices between fraud with emission certificates and money laundering.

At his last station in Cantor, he strengthened the London location, where he lived for many years alongside New York.

He also lived in Frankfurt during the Deutsche Bank era.

Jain played golf and cricket, two sports that he also enjoyed watching as a spectator.

He leaves behind his wife Geetika and two children.