Meet the men in charge of bonuses at Deutsche

Michael Dobson, the chief executive of Schroders, was today named as one of the members of Deutsche Bank’s new compensation panel that it has set up to scrutinise pay, as it continues to take a knife to bankers’ remuneration.

   Dobson, an ex-Deutsche Bank banker, will be joined by four others, including the head of the panel Dr Jürgen Hambrecht, former chief executive officer of chemicals giant BASF.

 

   Deutsche first announced that it was setting up the panel in September, when it released a strategic and financial aspiration update under new co-chief executives, Anshu Jain and Jürgen Fitschen.

  Jain said at the time that the bank’s compensation process was “too complex” and needed to be more transparent, in line with an industry overhaul of the banking culture. One of many changes is that senior management will now only receive the deferred equity part of their bonus payouts after a five-year vesting period. Financial News profiles the men spearheading the bank’s new compensation panel.

Dr Jürgen Hambrecht

   Born in the German region of Reutlingen in 1946, Hambrecht started his career at BASF in 1976 and worked his way up from the laboratory to become chief executive officer in 2003. The chemicals PhD graduate retired from BASF in 2011, and now sits on the supervisory board as chairman at lubricant supplier Fuchs Petrolub AG. He is remembered for making some difficult decisions during his time at BASF. The European CEO reported that he persuaded BASF’s board of directors in 1997 to continue with their plans to buy out South Korean partnerships, despite the growing financial crisis engulfing much of Asia. The decision paid off when the company profited from Asia’s subsequent economic recovery.

Michael Dobson

   A former managing director at Deutsche Bank, Dobson joined Schroders in 2001 after the UK institution had recorded its first ever loss. Dobson joined Schroders as a non-executive director in April 2001, but just seven months later took on the reins of chief executive officer and has been there ever since. He made big staff cuts the year he joined, reducing headcount from 3,117 to 2,350, and announced a return to profitability during his second year at the helm.

Prior to Schroders, Dobson spent over a decade as chief executive of UK investment bank Morgan Grenfell which was later acquired by Deutsche Bank, but resigned over plans to merge with Dresdner Bank, a deal that never materialised.

Morris W Offit

   Currently chairman of wealth management advisory firm Offit Capital Advisors LLC, Offit first founded his own bank Offitbank in 1990, which later merged with US bank Wachovia. He also served as co-chief executive of Offit Hall Capital Management LLC from 2002 to 2007. Prior to launching his own-brand businesses, Offit was president of Julius Baer Securities, and was once a general partner at bond trading house Salomon Brothers. He has also been a senior independent director of the board of American International Group since 2005. Outside of finance, he is vice chair of the United Jewish Communities board of trustees and chairs the UJC Center for Jewish Philanthropy.

Dr Michael Otto

   Otto was chairman and chief executive of his family business, Otto Group, from 1981 to 2007, according to the Otto Group website. His father, Werner Otto, set up the German company as a mail-order business after the Second World War, and it has now grown into a retail and services business that employs over 53,000 people, according to its website. Otto junior is now chairman of the supervisory board. He studied economics at university and trained at a bank, but joined the family business in 1971. He holds a number of honorary posts, including founder and chairman of the board of trustees of the Michael Otto Foundation for Environmental Protection.

Dr Theo Waigel

   Former politician Waigel is currently a lawyer at GSK Stockmann & Kollegen in Munich. The law and political sciences graduate was Germany’s finance minister from 1989 to 1998 under Chancellor Helmut Kohl, and was a politician in Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag, from 1972 to 2001. Kohl worked on the Maastricht Treaty that was designed to ensure that eurozone countries properly managed their budgets, but later admitted it was “not strong enough”, according to the BBC.