Deutsche Bank should introduce a cap for top salaries, and staff do not need to earn double-digit million euro amounts, Werner Wenning, a member of Deutsche Bank's supervisory board, told Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. The demands by Wenning, a member of the German bank's 20-member board of directors, also known as the supervisory board, will add fuel to a debate raging within Germany's flagship lender about how to change its remuneration policy and remain competitive during an economic downturn.
"I'm in favour of caps," said Wenning, who this week also became supervisory board chairman at Germany's largest drugmaker Bayer. A radical downsizing of the investment banking industry as a whole means the danger of high-level staff defections had abated, making it easier to pay lower salaries, Wenning told the paper. "No manager, and no investment banker, needs double-digit million pay," Wenning said.