BERLIN, April 4 (Xinhua) -- John Thain, former chief executive officer (CEO) of the U.S. investment bank Merrill Lynch and New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), has been nominated to join Deutsche Bank's supervisory board, the Frankfurt-based financial institute announced on Wednesday.
Deutsche Bank informed shareholders of the nomination in an invitation letter to the publicly listed company's upcoming Annual General Meeting (AGM) on May 24.
The news comes amidst growing rumors of bitter infighting between CEO John Cryan and board chairman Paul Achleitner.
Media reports recently suggested that Cryan would be replaced prior to the official termination of his current contract in 2020, a claim which was vehemently disputed by the CEO in a subsequent internal letter to staff.
The newspaper "Times" cited information from an unnamed insider that Cryan's and Achleitner's relationship had "broken down entirely" after it was revealed that 2017 would be yet another year of losses for the embattled company.
Cryan assumed the post of CEO in 2015, vowing to reform the investment bank with an ambitious corporate restructuring program until the end of his contract in 2020. In March, it was revealed that Deutsche Bank had suffered annual losses of 735 million euros (904 million U.S. dollars) in 2017, taking the total figure of cumulative annual loses since 2015 to 9 billion euros.
Bonus payments to Deutsche Bank's management more than doubled during the same period and prompting widespread outrage in German media.
The German Social Democratic Party (SPD) economic policy spokesperson Bernd Westphal described the situation as "anything but positive" and attacked Cryan for signing generous pay-rises while the bank was still in the red.
Thain is only the latest of several new nominations in a wider ongoing supervisory board reshuffle at Deutsche Bank which has been overshadowed by a poor financial performance.
Following the departure of Eon CEO Johannes Teyssen and the retirement of SAP CEO Henning Kagermann, there will be no representatives of the German industry on Deutsche Bank's supervisory board for the first time in history.
Like many other German financial institutions, founded in the 1870s at the height of Germany's industrial catch-up process, Deutsche Bank has traditionally retained close ties with the country's powerful manufacturing sector. By contrast, the newly-assembled supervisory board will be dominated by managers who made their careers in the Anglo-American financial services industry.
Deutsche Bank is Germany's largest financial institute measured by the size of its balance sheet and employees 43,000 employees in the country.
The bank has been rocked by a series of international scandals since the 2007/08 financial crisis surrounding diverse allegations of fraud which have harmed its reputation and profitability.