Deutsche Bank Wealth Management has announced plans to beef up its headcount by a third as the wider group reportedly looks to chop up to 20,000 jobs internationally.
The UK is among the strategic growth areas Deutsche Bank Wealth Management is focusing on as it looks to hire an additional 300 client-facing employees by 2021.
The German bank sent out a press release on Monday morning amid media reports that the wider group plans to cut as many as 20,000 jobs globally, primarily in investment banking. The release said the wealth management push was part of the bank’s plan to invest in “growing revenue from stable sources”.
Deutsche Bank last year announced it would aim to increase its share of revenues from more stable sources to 65% by 2021.
The hires will focus on relationship managers and investment managers.
European market penetration was one of five key growth areas the wealth management arm is targeting with the UK and southern Europe named as areas it wants to focus on. It also wants to leverage its market leadership with the German Mittelstand.
In June, it hired Alistair Jex from Coutts to become head of discretionary portfolio management, while Piers Harris and Roddy Boulton, both from Credit Suisse, will join the UK business to become relationship managers this August. They join another Credit Suisse colleague, Aditya Mishra, who joined in September 2018, to oversee the global south Asia team in London.
In July 2017, former Coutts chief executive Michael Morley joined at the then newly opened headquarters in the Zig Zag Building to build out and lead the UK wealth management business.
Outside Europe, the wealth manager’s strategic growth areas also focused on family offices and ultra high net worth individuals. In China it will focus on offshore wealth; in the Americas, including the West Coast and Latin America, it will focus on entrepreneurs; emerging wealth in southeast Asia and non-resident Indians in the Gulf region.
For family offices, the wealth management division also plans to work with the corporate, investment banking and asset management divisions to serve clients with institutional needs.
“These investments will set us on the path to achieve our ambition of being a top-tier global wealth manager,” said global head of wealth management Fabrizio Campelli (pictured), who is based in London. “They focus on growth markets where we have a distinctive and attractive proposition to offer our target clients, while maintaining sound operational, financial and non-financial risk management.”
