A Deutsche Bank IBD managing director just left entirely of his own accord

The exits from Deutsche Bank aren't all taking place under sufferance as CEO Christian Sewing cuts costs. Deutsche insiders say a managing director (MD) in the German bank's financial institutions group (FIG) team has just quit entirely voluntarily.

Kristian Triggle, an insurance-focused MD on the FIG team is said to have handed in his notice last week. Deutsche Bank declined to comment, but Triggle is no longer listed as a Deutsche Bank employee and colleagues said he has left the bank. Triggle, who joined Deutsche from UBS in 2010, is understood to be off to RBC Capital Markets. RBC did not respond to a request to comment.

Triggle's exit comes as Deutsche Bank is in the process of cutting 7,000 jobs from across the bank globally.  Sewing has been pruning investment banking teams that are focused predominantly on non-German and non-European clients. Cuts have included the oil and gas team in May, Alasdair Warren (ex-head of EMEA corporate finance) and various members of the healthcare investment banking team in June, and the shipping team in July.

Front office job cuts in the investment bank were theoretically completed in July, suggesting Triggle's position at Deutsche Bank was safe. However, Virilo Moro, the ex-head of Deutsche Bank's financing and solutions (FSG) group for Spain and Portugal, was said to have been quietly trimmed last week. 

DB insiders suggest that Triggle was a "solid" member of DB's FIG team, which is run globally by Tadhg Flood. FIG is one of Deutsche's stronger teams and as such should be immune to Sewing's cost -cutting. Indeed, the bank has been strengthening the team: it hired Tom Spreutels as head of FIG corporate banking coverage from Citi and Sandeep Kamat as vice chairman of coverage, including SoftBank. However, both came in May before Sewing's plan really took effect.

As a single exit, Triggle's exit may be no big deal. But headhunters say they're receiving increasingly frequent calls from Deutsche Bankers looking to move. One disaffected MD in the investment bank tells us his department is being ravaged by cost-cutting: "Senior managers have been told one thing - reduce costs," he says. "Not even reduce costs and increase revenue. - Just, reduce costs. If someone is a revenue producer but is expensive, just fire them and don't bid them back if they try to leave."

Another Deutsche insider says well-publicized cost cutting measures like doing away with fruit are immaterial. "The whole fruit thing is ridiculous. In London, no one below senior management has had access to free fruit for YEARS.... they’ll save maybe £50 a month," he says.

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