Investment banking has always been known for super-high pay for its executives. Even when they were often not successful. Bankers are greedy. Take the DWS executive Asoka Wöhrmann, for example. He received an €8.15 million farewell package for an allegedly voluntary departure in the shadow of greenwashing suspicions.
Deutsche Bank has a lot to thank Christian Sewing for. Over the past three years, he has successfully trimmed Germany’s largest financial institution to profitability. And the results are impressive: Deutsche Bank increased its pre-tax profit for the year by a whopping 65%. The only thing Sewing will have to put up with from shareholders at the Annual General Meeting is the modest share price performance.
In this respect, it is understandable that Deutsche Bank made Sewing and his nine colleagues on the Board of Managing Directors pay 5% more for their work. However, the fact that the spirit of excess has not yet wholly left Deutsche Bank is shown by the fund subsidiary DWS, supervised by Sewing‘s deputy Karl von Rohr: Asoka Wöhrmann pocketed €8.15 million in severance pay – for an allegedly voluntary departure in the shadow of greenwashing suspicions.
On top of this comes another €5.6 million in annual salary. However, Wöhrmann only worked for half a year. DWS did not increase its adjusted earnings in 2022.
