FRANKFURT (AFP) - Deutsche Bank announced plans to reshuffle its management in order to meet its profit target for next year.
Germany's leading bank, which is often accused of neglecting its domestic business in favor of more lucrative investment banking activities, said its investment business would now be supervised by two people instead of four as is currently the case.
Thus, Anshu Jain, whose fixed-income business generates nearly half of Deutsche Bank's group profits, was promoted to head sales and trading, while Michael Cohrs remained head of global corporate finance.
As was widely expected, the bank also announced it had created a new board for the German market, called Management Committee Germany, to be headed by Juergen Fitschen.
"In Germany, we have created a platform which will coordinate delivery to our clients and further improve our service in our important home market," chief executive Josef Ackermann said.
Kevin Parker was promoted to oversee the bank's asset management unit jointly with current heads Pierre de Weck and Rainer Neske. Parker would replace Tom Hughes who had requested sabbatical leave for personal reasons, the bank said.
The changes had been widely flagged in the press ahead of a two-day retreat for Deutsche Bank executives held in Nice, southern France last weekend.
"These new responsibilities on the Group Executive Committee will improve the service to our clients and will strengthen regional representation on the group executive committee," Ackermann said.
Ackermann said he expected his restructuring efforts to pave the way for the bank to achieve its 25 percent pre-tax return on equity goal by the end of 2005.
The composition of the management board would remain unchanged.
Shares in the bank were showing a gain of 1.73 percent at 60.66 euros while the DAX index of 30 leading German stocks nudged only 0.10 percent higher to 3,981.74 points in late afternoon trading.
Dealers attributed the rise mostly to the announcement of better-than-expected results from US investment banks Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers.