Day of long faces – but not for everyone – economy

Day of long faces, “Dolf” for short or in German: “Day of long faces” is what investment bankers call it when they find out that their bonus is lower than expected. This rarely happens at Deutsche Bank, regardless of poor earnings or not, but it is usually a shock for bankers who are used to success. In the past few days, there has reportedly been a lot of grumbling among the staff at Germany’s largest bank. There are said to have been numerous critical comments on the intranet.

As the annual report now shows, it is probably not without reason: According to the 2023 compensation report, bonus payments for Deutsche Bank employees fell by six percent to two billion euros. “The business results and growth were taken into account, while at the same time the bank maintained its cost discipline,” said the financial institution. The total fixed salaries, on the other hand, rose by three percent – with a workforce that grew by six percent to 90,130 employees.

Deutsche Bank boss Christian Sewing also had to accept cuts in his remuneration last year – albeit only slightly. The Supervisory Board approved him total compensation of 8.75 (2022: 8.93) million euros. That’s a minus of two percent. The entire board also earned slightly less at 64.6 (64.9) million euros. Significantly more ended up in Sewing’s salary and retirement savings account in 2023 than in the previous year. His “remuneration granted and owed” rose to 5.01 (4.39) million euros. This also includes long-term bonuses from previous years, but not the bonuses granted for performance in 2023, which will only be paid out in the following years. The bank announced that it would present a simplified remuneration system to the general meeting this year.

One employee earned more than 14 million euros

As had already been leaked, the board received the deductions because of the service debacle at Postbank. When assessing Christian Sewing and deputy boss James von Moltke, it was said in the best annual report German that the supervisory board recognized the achievements, for example in implementing the strategy, but had also examined the problems in customer service in the context of the Unity project and its negative effects and therefore made an “individual reduction in the target achievement level for the short-term component”. The service problems were triggered by the move of Postbank IT to the Deutsche Bank systems. Numerous customers were unable to access their accounts for a long time. The problems have so far caused additional costs of around 80 million euros.

But there are still plenty of income millionaires at the bank. As the annual report also shows, in 2023, 505 employees still received total compensation of more than one million euros – that is significantly more income millionaires than in any other DAX company. In the previous year there were 572 employees. Most of them, namely 290, earned between one and 1.5 million euros. Remarkable: In 2023, for the first time since these figures were published in 2014, an employee below the board of directors earned 14 to 14.9 million euros. The bank did not want to comment on who this employee was or what type of transactions and risks he was responsible for. In recent years, the highest-paid German banker has usually been between ten and eleven million euros. The new rules for the remuneration of bankers stipulate that bonuses can be paid out later or, in extreme cases, reclaimed. However, this almost never happens. In addition, banks have been required to publish such information in their annual reports for several years.