Living Large at Deutsche Bank

Josef Ackermann navigated Deutsche Bank through the global credit crunch and Europe’s sovereign-debt crisis with smaller losses than many competitors and no direct state aid. The chief executive officer also pushed back against European regulators who sought to limit the size of bank balance sheets. As he prepares to retire at the end of May, Ackermann leaves a bank whose assets are more than 80 percent the size of the entire German economy.

Deutsche Bank recently leapfrogged France’s BNP Paribas to reclaim the title of Europe’s largest bank. Assets at the Frankfurt-based company rose 14 percent, to €2.16 trillion ($2.88 trillion), in 2011, making it the largest publicly traded bank in the region for the first time in five years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.