Deutsche Bank juniors say they're being suffocated by a surfeit of MDs
Deutsche Bank's revamped M&A business didn't do badly in the first quarter of 2025. Revenues there were up 22% year-on-year. However, juniors in the business claim there has been a cost.
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Deutsche Bank isn't commenting, but after a hiring spree in which Deutsche added over 125 senior bankers between 2023 and 2024 under Fabrizio Campelli, juniors at the bank complain they're stuck between managing directors each trying to prove their worth.
"There are teams in London with five managing directors and two associates," complains one junior in Deutsche's London office. "All these MDs are now pitching like crazy, and we're stuck in a pissing contest between them."
Deutsche Bank's mass of managing directors in London has long been an issue. Accounts released last September by DB Group Services (UK) Limited for 2023 show the bank's London business structured as follows:
Source: DB Group Services
In other words, across Deutsche Bank's UK operations as a whole, the number of MDs was roughly equivalent to the number of associates in 2023. This was before additional senior banker hiring in 2024.
There have been previous complaints about the effects of Deutsche's poorly structured pyramid. Last year, juniors on the TMT team told us they were leaving due to overwork and that the surfeit of MDs was partly to blame. "Some deals have three or four MDs managing them," one told us. "That's completely different to other banks where there will be two."
Deutsche's juniors are querying why the bank hired so many banking MDs instead of focusing on mid-ranking staff. "They think they need MDs because they will generate revenues, but this isn't always the case," says one. "Some of these MDs are very generalised and don't know their area of the market well, so they just pitch a lot. You can do more with cheaper directors."
With the new MDs busy proving their worth, juniors at Deutsche complain that they're working relentless hours. 100 hour weeks are common, and the bank allegedly does little to prevent this. "I've logged multiple weeks of 100 hours plus and nothing was ever communicated to me," says one London banking junior. Another says he had a better experience at a US bank: "There, if you work more than three days running for 18 hours, it was flagged, but that doesn't happen here."
In Deutsche Bank's defence, one junior says there is a system for monitoring hours: "There’s a whole operations team that sends out a monthly calendar in the form of an Excel template with a macro where you fill in your hours. That's sent to an operations team that tracks how long you work, but they never say anything."
The supposition among DB juniors is that after adding over 100 senior people, the bank then intended to add analysts and associates to keep the team in balance. "They've been hesitant to do that until deals come back," says one. "So, now we're stuck with this hourglass structure."
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