(Reuters) – Deutsche Bank (DBKGn.DE) should introduce a cap for top salaries, and staff do not need to earn double-digit million euro amounts, Werner Wenning, a member of Deutsche Bank’s supervisory board, told Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.
The demands by Wenning, a member of the German bank’s 20-member board of directors, also known as the supervisory board, will add fuel to a debate raging within Germany’s flagship lender about how to change its remuneration policy and remain competitive during an economic downturn.
“I’m in favour of caps,” said Wenning, who this week also became supervisory board chairman at Germany’s largest drugmaker Bayer (BAYGn.DE).
A radical downsizing of the investment banking industry as a whole means the danger of high-level staff defections had abated, making it easier to pay lower salaries, Wenning told the paper.
“No manager, and no investment banker, needs double-digit million pay,” Wenning said.
Earlier this week Deutsche Bank’s new co-Chief Executives Anshu Jain and Juergen Fitschen told shareholders they will find 4.5 billion euros ($5.92 billion) in cost savings and make a fundamental change to the bank’s bonus culture.
Deutsche Bank’s top brass will see part of their pay deferred for longer, and will now have to wait five years before being paid out, the lender said on Tuesday.
Overall the amount paid to bankers will also be reduced, the bank said earlier this week, adding that bonus policies were still in the process of being finalized.
(Reporting By Edward Taylor, editing by William Hardy)