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.
