Monday, 09 May 2011 13:19
Written by GW

A former senior International Monetary Fund official has said that Deutsche Bank CEO Josef Ackermann is "one of the most dangerous bankers in the world."
Deutsche Bank CEO Ackermann Slammed
‘One of the Most Dangerous Bankers in the World’
Former IMF chief economist Simon Johnson has attacked Deutsche Bank CEO Josef Ackermann in an interview with a German newspaper. Johnson said that Ackermann was “dangerous” because of his excessive profit targets and accused him of taking excessive risks at the taxpayers’ expense.
For many people, Deutsche Bank CEO Josef Ackermann is a hero of the German business world. But for one leading economist, at least, the Swiss banker is nothing less than a villain.
In an interview with the left-leaning German daily Die Tageszeitung published Thursday, Simon Johnson, former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, described Ackermann as “one of the most dangerous bankers in the world.”
Johnson singled out Ackermann’s famous target of a 25 percent pretax return on equity for particular criticism. He said such returns were only possible because Ackermann knows that Deutsche Bank is too big to fail and that it would be “rescued by taxpayers” if it was faced with bankruptcy. Return on equity is calculated by dividing profit by the capital invested.
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