DEUTSCHE BANK reacted angrily yesterday after Germany's senior Protestant bishop accused Josef Ackermann, its chief executive, of turning money-making into a form of "idolatry".
In a rare and testy public exchange between a prominent German financial institution and a religious leader, Deutsche Bank dismissed as "inappropriate" the remarks by Bishop Wolfgang Huber, chairman of Germany's evangelical church council.
Germany's largest bank was upset by the timing of the personal attack, made in a newspaper interview published on Christmas Eve, as well as the substance of the censure.
Criticism of bankers from German politicians and church leaders is far from new but the complaints intensified and became more mainstream after the financial system almost failed in the wake of the mid-September Lehman Brothers collapse.
Swiss-born Mr Ackermann, well known in Germany for setting his bank the goal of earning a pretax return on equity of 25 per cent, has long been a popular target as the globally active Deutsche Bank is often seen as having special, domestic responsibilities. But this attack appears to have taken the bank aback.
Speaking to the Berliner Zeitung newspaper, Bishop Huber argued bankers had a duty to look beyond the short term: "Never again should a Deutsche Bank chief executive set a profit goal of 25 per cent." Such goals drove up profit expectations to unsustainable levels and amounted to "a form of idolatry", he said. "In the current circumstances, money has become a god."
The bishop highlighted a widespread view in Germany that the US had largely caused the crisis by encouraging excessive borrowing.
Deutsche Bank might have felt particularly aggrieved by the bishop's attack because it has not taken advantage of the emergency support made available by Berlin to prop up the banking system. - (Financial Times service)