Hammonds Out as Deutsche Bank’s Leadership Woes Continue

Kim Hammonds, the bank’s group chief operating officer (COO), will depart Deutsche Bank on May 24, according to a statement provided by spokespeople.

A new group COO is “to be nominated in the near future following consultations with regulators.”

Hammonds initially joined Deutsche Bank in 2013 as its co-head of technology and operations. She was elevated to the group COO role in August 2016.

She became quickly known within the financial industry as an outspoken voice on technology issues, and was tasked with upgrading the bank’s aging infrastructure. Prior to Deutsche, she held senior technology roles at Boeing, Dell and Ford.

Press reports have speculated that comments she made at an internal Deutsche Bank event in March, in which she described the bank as “dysfunctional,” may have contributed to the decision to leave, in addition to slow progress on technology reform. Deutsche Bank says the decision was made “by mutual agreement.”

Hammonds’ departure comes at a time of upheaval for Deutsche Bank, after its CEO, John Cryan, was effectively ousted by the bank’s supervisory board. Christian Sewing, a lifelong Deutsche Bank employee, who started his career as an apprentice, was named as the new chief executive on April 9.

It is also the latest blow in a rough few years for Deutsche, which has struggled to fully recover since the financial crisis, and which has seen its stock value dip in recent years. Sewing’s installation will mean this is the third leadership team the bank has had since its hard-charging CEO Josef Ackermann departed in 2012, having spent years trying to rapidly expand the bank’s footprint and make it a global challenger in investment banking, markets and retail banking.

Deutsche’s subsequent experiment with co-CEOs in Anshu Jain and Jurgen Fitschen also ended abruptly, when Jain left in 2015. Fitschen subsequently handed the baton to Cryan in 2016.