Deutsche Bank London: How top-heavy is it really?

If you're disparaging Deutsche Bank, it's fashionable to say that it employs far too many chiefs and far too few Indians. - That a surfeit of senior DB staff are responsible for driving costs up and that they won't leave for rival banks, possibly because of Deutsche's very generous historic pension scheme. 

It seems there might actually be something in this.

The most recent annual report for DB Group Services (UK) Limited, a Deutsche Bank subsidiary which covers the German bank's activities in the UK, suggests that Deutsche Bank's London operation has nearly twice as many directors and managing directors as analysts and associates. 

The figures are shown in the chart below. DB Group Services' most recent annual report covers the year ending December 2017, so things may have changed slightly since then, but the the implication is that Deutsche in London is far from a pyramidal structure. 

At the end of 2017 the company employed 7,472 people in total - and seemingly accounted for all of Deutsche's staff in the UK. 

Nor was there much effort to remedy the top-heavyness during the final years when John Cryan was CEO. - Director and managing director numbers fell 0.4% each between 2016 and 2017, while associate numbers were down 8%. 

As CEO Christian Sewing casts about for new ways to cut costs, the implications are pretty clear: Deutsche needs to prune at the top and hire at the bottom.

Deutsche Bank paid its first year analysts in investment banking an average salary of £50k and an average bonus of £15k last year according to recruitment firm Dartmouth Partners. Recruitment firm Arkesden Partners says third year vice presidents (VPs) at the bank receive salaries of £170k plus bonuses of £145k. 

DB Group Services' report for 2018 is due in September 2019.

Deutsche declined to comment.

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