Top managers at Deutsche Bank will forego their annual bonuses, CEO John Cryan said, after coming under fire for awarding big incentive payouts even though Germany's largest bank lost money last year. Cryan was quoted by the Zeit weekly as saying the 12-member executive board would not get bonuses for 2017, but variable compensation would be paid to other staff as planned.
At a Zeit event at the South by Southwest tech conference in the United States, Cryan said the bonus pool would be "significantly higher" than the 546 million euros ($672 million) paid in 2016 but below the 2.4 billion euros awarded the year before. Deutsche Bank came under fire in January over reports it planned to pay more than 1 billion euros in bonuses despite being pushed to its third consecutive annual loss due to the one-off impact of a US tax reform.