For a man who was supposed to be retiring this spring, Josef Ackermann shows little sign of slowing down. Over the past 18 months, the Swiss-born CEO has guided Deutsche Bank through the financial crisis with aplomb, shifting it from a high-risk proprietary trading shop to one geared mainly toward executing customer orders, all while restoring a healthy level of profitability. And he has done so without the help of a government bailout or capital injection — making Deutsche one of only a handful of European banks not to dip into the public purse.
Ackermann’s success, moreover, resonates well beyond Deutsche. The 61-year-old banker has become a standard-bearer for the industry. As the head of Germany’s only healthy and globally powerful bank, Ackermann enjoys a clout at home that enabled him last fall to persuade Chancellor Angela Merkel not to impose a bonus tax on bankers, as the U.K. government had. In January he led an industry push-back against regulatory reform proposals at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Ackermann warned regulators not to raise capital requirements too sharply, saying such a move would undermine efforts to revive bank lending and stimulate economic growth. He also dismissed as “misguided” a U.S. proposal to bar banks from conducting proprietary trading and running hedge funds and private equity funds — a move that would force Deutsche to curtail some American activities.
Navigating the crisis skillfully has taken Ackermann, and Deutsche, to new heights. Long a German powerhouse with grand but largely unfulfilled global ambitions, Deutsche today stands as one of the few clear winners to emerge from the financial turmoil. While many rivals have suffered massive credit losses and management upheaval, the Frankfurt-based bank has strengthened its position in the global investment banking bulge bracket alongside the likes of Goldman Sachs Group and JPMorgan Chase & Co. of the U.S., Britain’s Barclays and Credit Suisse Group. ....