City of London and Wall Street-educated Jain, who led Deutsche as co-chief executive from 2012 to 2015, had been suffering from stomach cancer and died in the UK on Friday night, his family confirmed. “We are deeply saddened that our beloved husband, son and father . . . died overnight after a tough, five-year battle with duodenal cancer,” Jain’s family said in a statement, adding that he had managed to outlive his doctors’ original prognosis by four years. “Until his last day, Anshu stood by his lifelong resolve to ‘not be a statistic,’” they said. In a statement released on Saturday, Alexander Wynaendts, chairman of Deutsche Bank’s supervisory board, said: “Anshu Jain has played a key role in expanding Deutsche Bank’s position in our global business with corporate and institutional investors. Today, this is of strategic importance not only for Deutsche Bank, but also for Europe as a financial centre.” Jain, a pioneer in derivatives trading, joined Germany’s biggest lender in 1995 from Merrill Lynch, where he had set up and ran a unit that covered hedge funds around the world. He quickly rose through the ranks. After his mentor Edson Mitchell—the American who ran Deutsche’s investment banking arm—died in a plane crash in 2000, Jain became head of Deutsche’s global markets business before becoming head of investment banking in 2004. Together he oversaw a period of rapid growth in which the unit generated the vast bulk of Deutsche’s profits, helping it briefly become the world’s biggest bank. Jain took sole control of the division in 2010 when he outearned then-CEO Josef Ackermann. In what was then a rare achievement for an outsider with less than polished German, Jaipur-born, Delhi-raised Jain rose to the top job at Deutsche Bank in 2012, becoming co-managing director alongside German Jürgen Fitschen. He commanded one of the biggest salaries in global banking and won praise from key investors, including Larry Fink, the boss of the bank’s largest shareholder, BlackRock. But shareholder unrest over lackluster profits, rising costs, labor disputes and repeated clashes with the Deutsche establishment in Frankfurt led to Jain’s departure in the summer of 2015, two years before his contract was due to expire. The bank has also come under pressure from regulators, who have raised concerns about its internal culture. Deutsche has been forced to pay billions of euros to settle allegations of Libor manipulation and has faced investigations into money laundering and foreign exchange abuses. After stepping aside for a while, Jain returned to financial services in 2017 as chairman of US investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald, while also acting as an adviser to online bank SoFi. Christian Sewing, CEO of Deutsche, said: “Anyone who worked with Anshu experienced a passionate leader of intellectual brilliance. His energy and his faith in the bank left a great impression on many of us. Our thoughts and condolences go out to his wife, children and mother. We will honor his memory.” Larry Fink, chairman and CEO of BlackRock, said in a statement that he was “deeply saddened” by Jain’s death. “I met Anshu while he was at Merrill Lynch and we stayed close as his career grew, including his time at Deutsche. I will always be grateful for the time we spent together,” Fink said. “He will be remembered for his leadership in financial services and his deep commitment to conservation. My thoughts are with his wife, children, family and friends during this difficult time.”
