Deutsche Bank: The glass menagerie

Where would you find a team that boasts a sumo wrestler, a black monk, an Indian chief, a Canadian bodybuilder, and a great white boss whose face is so perma-tanned that red ink won't stick to it?

These are the top managers of Deutsche Bank, although they do have many colleagues who escape such epithets, being ordinary men in suits.

The sumo wrestler is Hilmar Kopper, 64, chairman of the supervisory board, speaker of the bank until 1997, whose giant frame and booming voice led the charge into investment banking in the early 1990s while half the bank was obsessed with German unification. Now, from his non-executive position, he still pulls the strings, insiders say.

The black monk is Ulrich Cartellieri, 61, tall, with chiselled good looks, who sits next to Kopper on the supervisory board and is...