"My boss at Deutsche Bank was one of the good guys on the floor"

There's a lot of negative news around at the moment, especially about Deutsche Bank, but as someone who left there recently, I can say that Deutsche is a bank that had some great and legendary traders who really looked after us junior staff. 

My boss, for example, was one of the few “good guys” on the Street, and a lot of us really admired him. He was a star trader who consistently made money, and was one of the bank's very top producers in 2018.  The trading floor liked and respected him. He was a huge rainmaker: trading-wise, he took some of the biggest risks on the floor and when the chips were down and the pressure was on, he just seemed to make the right trading calls.

Senior managers recognized his value. One said something to us along the lines of, “He’s the best trader we have. We can put anything in front of that guy and he’ll find a way to make us money.”  He was a legend within the firm, but he also took care of his people. The younger traders looked up to him and he was always a large presence on the floor.

As an example of his ethos, back in January and February, as things were getting bad at the bank, he decided to buy lunch for the entire floor at 60 Wall multiple days in a row. We didn’t think too much of it at the time because he’d also had a few insane PnL weeks to start 2019. However, we later found he’d also bought lunch for the floors in Europe and Asia to take care of his teams and others there.  

Ok, a few lunches are not a huge deal, but this isn't the kind of thing every trader does for his people. For some of us that lunch was the best bonus we got.

Unfortunately, he's not at Deutsche any more. He left, and he did so before bonuses were even paid. He was a presence that was sorely missed in our final months at the bank.

Simon Mallinson is the pseudonym of a former trader at Deutsche Bank

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