Anshu Jain, who was forced to step down from the top job at Deutsche Bank after a series of regulatory mishaps, will join the private trading firm Cantor Fitzgerald this month as group president. The appointment, which was announced by Cantor’s chairman and chief executive, Howard Lutnick, comes 18 months after Jain resigned under pressure from his job as co-chief executive of Germany’s largest bank as concerns mounted over Deutsche’s financial health and the many investigations it was facing. A Cantor spokeswoman confirmed the appointment.
Jain, 53, was among a small group of Merrill Lynch executives who were persuaded to join Deutsche in 1995, with a mandate to build an investment bank that would challenge large firms like Barclays, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase. Deutsche’s global markets division would do exactly that during its first 10 years in existence, becoming a market leader in derivatives, fixed income and foreign currency sales and trading.
But its hard-charging culture of pursuing profits and risk - and paying its bankers and traders magnificent sums along the way - proved to be the division’s undoing in the years after the financial crisis.
As group president, Jain will, in effect, become a partner to Lutnick, helping him oversee Cantor’s various businesses and, crucially, providing strategic insights. According to a Cantor spokeswoman, Jain will not have a group of executives reporting to him. Instead, he will strategize and engage with clients at a senior level.
Lutnick called the hiring of Jain “a strong next step in broadening our franchise.” “He will work alongside me as my partner as we expand our global footprint and drive the firm’s momentum,” Lutnick said.
The two men have been friends for years and have on occasion even spent vacations together. People who know Jain well say they are not surprised that he would soon return to the front lines of finance. From an early point in his career, he had seen himself as a Wall Street chief executive - in the classic style of wielding unchallenged power and influence.
