Co-chief executives of Deutsche Bank resign

FRANKFURT, Germany - Even as other European banks reduced their presence on Wall Street in the face of new regulations and legal challenges, Deutsche Bank has been the exception.

But with the announced resignations Sunday of its co-chief executives, one of them Anshu Jain, an architect of Deutsche Bank's two-decade expansion into the big leagues of investment banking, the bank is likely to re-examine its status as the last European bank left standing on Wall Street.

Jain, 52, said he would resign at the end of the month after three years as co-chief executive. Jurgen Fitschen, 66, the other co-chief executive, will stay another year but step down before his contract would have run out in 2017, Deutsche Bank said Sunday.

Jain will be replaced by John Cryan, 54, a former high-ranking executive of the Swiss bank UBS. Cryan will become the first leader of Deutsche Bank since the 1990s whose career has not revolved around turning it into a worthy competitor to Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and the other U.S. investment banking giants.

Cryan has spent much of his career in investment banking, but not at Deutsche Bank. He is a member of Deutsche Bank's supervisory board, a part-time position he will give up, but has never been an executive at the bank.

His lack of a personal history with the investment banking unit may fuel speculation that Deutsche Bank will scale back its investment banking activities. Although Deutsche Bank, Germany's largest bank, has the biggest investment bank not based in the U.S., some analysts say it can no longer compete at the same level in an age when regulators are cracking down on banks' use of borrowed money to do business.

Deutsche Bank has already announced a reorganization plan intended to simplify the bank and annually save 3.5 billion euros (or about $3.9 billion). Its goal is to produce a profit equal to at least 10 percent of the capital invested.