Deutsche Bank reviews

Senior management have buried their heads in the sand for too many years regarding the cost challenge that the business continues to face. Forced in the last couple of years (quite rightly) by John Cryan & shareholders to finally tackle this issue the (unfortunately) necessary restructures have been managed very badly. Senior management in some divisions have made short term panicked decisions ultimately prioritising saving themselves & favourite senior long servers (high cost employees in high cost locations). They have made lower cost mid to junior level employees redundant or just moved “deckchairs around on the deck of the Titanic”. Many have not made decisions based on robust business reasons. In some isolated examples it has been worse still. I have seen examples of totally unethically miss managing people & making the environment so toxic that people have left of their own accord nearly broken. This of course has failed to tackle the cost challenge and has resulted in multiple badly managed rounds of redundancies within months in the same areas. This has left moral very low for those left and has blocked career paths for years to come. This does not set the bank up for success and will drive down moral further over the medium to long term. COOs are in the main unskilled in their field and have little understanding, control or governance in their areas. There is no sign of this improving, only more responsibility being delegated to already failing individuals. HR are being “dumbed down” to administrators & processors with strong capable people leaving this department in large numbers in the last 18 months. These two issues (COO & HR combined) mean that management do not have capable or trusted advisors & are also not challenged to make short, medium AND long term cost decisions whilst restructuring by humanely exiting the right mix of people to allow the business to rebuild sustainably.