“At least Christian Sewing had the grace to properly thank John Cryan for his enormous contribution to Deutsche Bank, because trust me: if Cryan had not reset this place then this guy would have absolutely no chance”
“Sewing’s not the person I ever thought to see sharing one of those IIF CEO panels with Jamie Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein. I don’t think they’ll be quaking in their Oxfords”
“So we’re going to reduce capital to the poor-return businesses and allocate more to the good. And we’re just getting to this? This isn’t strategy. This is basic management”
“I feel really sorry for Sewing, because from his first days as chief executive, all anyone is talking about is how soon and in what circumstances he too will be sacked”
“We’d got to the point where people were coming to work in the morning for another day of arguing with each other”
“Deutsche Bank and its staff have for years suffered from an attitude, an arrogance and a mistakenly high opinion of their own and the bank’s importance – seemingly shared by many German people and German politicians – that simply bears no relation to the facts. It is not, I am afraid, that big or important a bank anymore”