Deutsche Bank abandons digital bank plan in strategy U-turn

London

DEUTSCHE Bank AG chief executive officer John Cryan said Germany's largest lender is abandoning plans for a new digital bank in the US, led by Henry Ritchotte, just months after it was announced.

While the team under Mr Ritchotte developed an "excellent blueprint" for the service in the US, Deutsche Bank decided that the project would "divert resources from our core strategy of further focusing and innovating the bank's offerings to clients and rebuilding its infrastructure", Mr Cryan said on Monday. The lender will discuss plans to redeploy Mr Ritchotte and his team into the existing business, he said.