By Patrick Graham
LONDON (Reuters) - Deutsche Bank (DE:DBKGn) is reorganising its electronic, currency and rates businesses to bring together electronic trading across all asset classes under a new head, who will report direct to the bank's management board, the company said in an internal memo on Thursday.
A senior source at the German bank said the move was aimed at aligning operations with those of its U.S. rivals and would funnel additional resources into unifying its electronic offering to clients.
The memo, provided to Reuters by a Deutsche spokesman, puts the German bank's previous head of foreign exchange, David Wayne, in charge of the bank's electronic trading capabilities across all asset classes, reporting to global markets chief Garth Ritchie. He will also head the new Strategic Analytics team.
Russell Lascala and Jonathan Tinker, previously the head of FX spot and derivatives trading will become Co-Heads of FX, while Kemal Askar has been made Head of Rates, all reporting to the head of a newly aligned rates and FX business, Sam Wisnia.
That follows the bank's unveiling of a new structure for its markets business in March, when it announced an 8 billion euro capital hike.
It is merging its trading division back with its corporate finance unit, saying the business will now focus predominantly on serving corporate clients and less on institutional ones such as pension and hedge funds.
The German lender's markets business has lost ground to Wall Street rivals in recent years, but chief executive John Cryan said in March that the bank would now be investing in it, even as he continues to cut costs and legacy assets.
Cryan has taken personal charge of Deutsche's U.S. business, and wants the bank to rank in the top five globally for FICC (fixed income, currencies and commodities).
"This is not a cost-cutting measure," a source at the bank said. "There will be an increase in the net investment in etrading."