Deutsche Bank has hired Olivier Vigneron from French rival Natixis to replace Stuart Lewis as chief risk officer, the German lender announced on Sunday.
Vigneron, who for more than a decade until 2019 worked in various senior risk roles at JPMorgan, will start in March next year and become a member of the executive board by May.
The announcement follows Friday’s announcement that former Aegon chief executive Alex Wynaendts, a non-executive director at Citigroup, Uber and Air France-KLM, is set to become the bank’s new chair in May when Paul Achleitner’s second five-year term ends.
Vigneron, who holds an engineering degree from Ecole Polytechnique in Paris and a PhD in economics from the University of Chicago, started his banking career in 2000 as a credit derivatives trader at Goldman Sachs, followed by a three-year stint at Deutsche Bank. He joined JPMorgan in 2008, moving to the risk department after four years on the credit derivatives trading desk.
Vigneron was part of the team that investigated the “London Whale” scandal in which JPMorgan suffered a $6.2bn loss from “egregious” trading activity. It later agreed to pay $920m in penalties and admitted securities law violations to US and UK regulators for oversight failures.
He was hired in late 2019 by Natixis, which at the time was suffering from severe shortcomings in its risk management. The French bank was hit in 2018 by heavy losses in Asia, when so-called autocall derivatives sold to retail investors and private banking customers turned sour.
A year later the Financial Times revealed that Natixis’s London-based asset management subsidiary H2O had put more than €1bn of investors’ money into illiquid bonds linked to Lars Windhorst, a controversial German financier. Natixis this year announced its intention to divest its majority stake in H2O.
“Olivier brings the global expertise and perspective required to assess and manage all risk types and to maintain Deutsche Bank’s strong track record in risk management,” chief executive Christian Sewing said on Sunday.
Under Lewis, whose departure was announced as part of a wider management reshuffle this year, Deutsche Bank dodged the main financial scandals of recent years. In March, the lender managed to unwind its €3.4bn exposure to Archegos without losses as the family office collapsed. By contrast, Swiss lender Credit Suisse suffered a $5.5bn loss from Archegos.
Deutsche Bank stayed clear of Greensill, and withdrew early from a €150m margin loan to Wirecard chief executive Markus Braun before the company imploded, and had hedged most of its €80m loan exposure to the firm.
Achleitner on Sunday said that Lewis “has played a vital role in establishing best-in-class risk controls for our bank and steered Deutsche Bank safely through some very challenging periods”.
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