The high personal toll of Deutsche Bank's fall

New York

IN 2005, Deutsche Bank, then a powerhouse in the selling of risky derivatives on a global scale, was minting money. To mark the moment, the bank's profit engine - its global markets division - commissioned a book about itself. The remembrance would celebrate how Deutsche Bank, once a sleepy lender to German car companies, had transformed itself in just 10 years into a force in financial engineering, selling interest-rate swaps, credit derivatives and opaque tax-slashing investment vehicles to the world's wealthy elite.

In the view of one senior executive, it all came down to masterly salesmanship by a single man, Anshu Jain, the chief promoter of the bank's hottest product: risk.