But after drastically reducing the size of its American i-bank last year, which saw the bank's revenues take a sharp hit, Deutsche decided to reward its remaining American employees with the lion's share of the 2018 bonus pool, Bloomberg reported. Meanwhile, many of the bank's employees in Europe and elsewhere got nothing.

Shortly after taking over a year ago, Sewing announced deep cuts to DB's US rates sales and trading,as well as its corporate finance business, yet the bank hasn't given up on its US i-banking business just yet. In an indication of just how much importance the bank has attached to the revival of its once dominant investment bank, Sewing's compensation for 2018 totaled some 7 million euros, while the bank's I-banking chief Garth Ritchie received 8.6 million.