Deutsche Bank is to appoint a former Barclays legal executive Dagmar Valcárcel to its supervisory board, replacing Stefan Simon, who is moving to the struggling German lender’s management board to deal with regulatory and legal affairs.
Two people familiar with the matter confirmed the planned move, which has not yet been formalised. Deutsche Bank declined to comment.
Mr Simon was nominated to the supervisory board by the Qatari royal family, which is the bank’s biggest shareholder. It was not immediately clear on Wednesday whether Ms Valcárcel’s appointment had been co-ordinated with the Qataris.
UK-based hedge fund Petrus Advisers, which in April unsuccessfully nominated Ms Valcárcel as independent director for Vienna-listed real estate company Immofinanz, described her as a person with “extensive operational, financial and risk management expertise” and said she has “strategic and hands-on experience of changing business models and driving execution”.
Deutsche Bank on Sunday unveiled a fundamental strategy shift that includes the closure of large parts of its trading activities in investment banking, the cutting of 18,000 jobs and the hive off of €74bn in risk-weighted assets.
With analysts and investors doubting the bank’s ability to deliver on the restructuring, which will cost €7.4bn by 2022, Deutsche’s share price has fallen by more than 10 per cent this week, recovering slightly on Wednesday.
According to a CV published by Petrus in April, Ms Valcárcel is a qualified lawyer in the UK, Spain and Germany who from 2010 to 2017 worked in different roles at Barclays, among them legal counsel Western Europe. In her last position at Barclays, she was head of strategic resolution for insurance operations in the lender’s non-core unit.
German business daily Handelsblatt first reported the news.
