BERLIN, Feb. 5 (Xinhua) -- Josef "Joe" Ackermann, former chief executive officer (CEO) at Deutsche Bank, defended his record at the top of Germany's largest financial institution on Monday.
Speaking at an event to celebrate his 70th birthday in Frankfurt, the Swiss national rejected renewed claims that Deutsche Bank is still suffering from errors in management made during his tenure. Earning figures released by acting CEO John Cryan last week showed that the financial behemoth suffered annual losses for a third consecutive year in 2017.
"At the time, I passed on a bank to my successors which was well equipped for the future," Ackermann said. He emphasized that Deutsche Bank had returned to making "respectable profits" in the wake of the financial crisis and had "massively reduced" risks.
However, senior figures in Deutsche Bank's current management have publicly complained that the firm was too slow to tackle problems following the 2007/08 financial crisis compared with its competitors.
"We would be in a better shape now, if we had already done what we did during the past two years six or seven years ago," Cryan told press.
Similarly, Cryan's co-president Marcus Schenk lamented that the bank had "done things behind the backs of our customers before and during the financial crisis." Schenk criticized that such behavior "did not contribute positively" to Deutsche Bank's image.
Nevertheless, Ackermann insisted Monday that he had "swiftly corrected, whatever needed to be corrected" as CEO. He added that the legal costs which later hampered Deutsche Bank's performance were "unforeseeable" when he departed. He noted that, in any case, U.S. firms who had been served even larger fines by judicial authorities for misconduct had since returned to rapid growth.
"It is not my style to publicly point the finger of blame at predecessors or successors," Ackermann said. Instead he pointed to the "serious sovereign debt crisis in the euro area" as key factor in Deutsche Bank's relative underperformance compared to its investment banking rivals on Wall Street.
While admitting that he too had "made mistakes", the former CEO expressed his view that these were "comparatively very limited." Ackermann also defended the declaration of the ambitious corporate goal declared by himself to achieve a return on equity of 25 percent in this context.
"Only a profitable bank can shoulder the risks which the business model inherently entails," he argued.
