BERLIN: Anshu Jain, a cricket-mad Indian slated to head Deutsche Bank, Germany's top private bank, has come under fire for his love of the sport, practically unknown in the country, a media report said Wednesday.
Business daily Handelsblatt said Jain had raised hackles in the bank after writing an opinion article in Newsweek magazine about cricket ahead of the World Cup that begins on Saturday in India and Sri Lanka.
"There were a few shakes of the head over that," a Deutsche Bank insider told Handelsblatt, which added: "The team sport played mainly in former British colonies like India has very little to do with German culture."
In the Newsweek article, entitled "Cricket, Lovely Cricket", Jain, 47, set out the history of the Cricket World Cup and offered his views on the likely winner.
"My perhaps parochial pick is India playing Australia or Pakistan in the final. Approximately a billion and a half of the world's population will be agog ... the rest, oblivious," Jain writes in concluding the article.
Jain, 47, currently based in London, where he plays for Deutsche Bank's cricket team, heads the investment banking division, has been tipped to take over the reins from Josef Ackermann when the Swiss steps down in 2013.
But the competition for arguably the top job in German banking is fierce. Axel Weber, outgoing head of the country's central bank, has also been linked with the position, possibly in tandem with Jain.
Comments
Comments are closed for this article.