People and Business: Standing down

JUERGEN KRUMNOW, 54, is to stand down as Deutsche Bank's chief financial officer at the year- end, trousering a DM15m payoff. Deutsche's normal retirement age is 60. The bank insists that Mr Krumnow is leaving of his own accord.

Sources close to Deutsche's twin-towered Frankfurt headquarters suspect that Mr Krumnow's departure may have been hastened by his criticism of the takeover of Bankers Trust, irking the group of investment bankers surrounding the bank's chief executive officer, Rolf Breuer. His constant sniping at their high-flown plans went down like the proverbial lead balloon, apparently.

Meanwhile, Mr Krumnow himself is believed to have been miffed by his earlier failure to talk the rest of the board into spending some money on standardising the would-be global bank's IT systems and software. Despite his efforts, each foreign subsidiary still retains its own system.