Deutsche Bank Reportedly Approached Former USB Executive to Replace CEO

Deutsche Bank’s chairman Paul Achleitner has reached out to Juerg Zeltner, the former head ‎of UBS Group AG’s $1.3 trillion wealth-management unit, in his search for a new candidate to ‎replace the current Chief Executive Officer John Cryan. ‎

Spiegel magazine reported on Friday, without disclosing its sources, that the lender approached other candidates, including ‎UniCredit SpA CEO Jean Pierre Mustier and Standard Chartered Plc ‎CEO Bill Winters, but most of them are thought to have spurned the ‎overture.‎

Zeltner retired from UBS in January 2018, ending a more than three-decade-long tenure with the Swiss bank, according to his biography on the ‎company’s website. ‎He originally joined Zurich-based UBS as an apprentice in 1984 ‎and served on the bank’s global executive board for nearly nine years.‎

His leadership has turned the wealth-management division into a key ‎revenue driver at UBS, mainly powered by inflows from wealthy Asian ‎clients.‎

Disagreement between Achleitner and Cryan, who has been ‎in office less than three years, is said to have flared over the latter’s ‎approach towards HNA Group Co, the Chinese conglomerate which ‎became the company’s top shareholders. ‎

Paul Achleitner, chairman of the board, was also pushing for a more ‎radical restructuring of businesses in order to “mollify investors ‎frustrated by the slow turnaround of the loss-making lender,” Reuters ‎reported earlier this week.‎

Investors have grown increasingly jittery about the pace of revenue ‎growth and the bank’s low share price. Germany’s largest lender has also attracted a ‎flurry of negative headlines following its annual reports that showed the ‎third consecutive loss in 2017.‎