A good hit from The Times this morning on plans to oust Deutsche Bank chief executive John Cryan.
Financial News followed swiftly with its own version, moving the story on more than a little. Both pieces look well sourced.
And what was there from Deutsche in response to what are plainly huge developments at a very big, very important bank?
Nuffink. No one in London or Frankfurt was prepared to say anything beyond “no comment”. No steer here, or nudge there. No sense, indeed, that anyone internal has any idea what is going on at the place they work.
If you email the person listed on Deutsche’s own website as head of UK communications, you get a reply that says “This is a delivery failure notification message ,” presumably because, I’m pretty sure, that bloke doesn’t even work there any more.
I doubt that any of this is the fault of the individual flaks in either city, for whom I have sympathy.
But it doesn’t seem to me to be a coincidence that as a company Deutsche Bank is all over the shop and that the external communications are exactly the same.
Really good companies tend to have really strong press operations. I can’t think of a single exception to this rule.
As for Deutsche, it needs a financial PR agency. Sharpish, I’d say.
