DEUTSCHE BANK AG FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Deutsche Bank (>> Deutsche Bank AG) supervisory board chief Paul Achleitner does not rule out taking appropriate measures including personnel changes resulting from the Libor affair, he was quoted saying on Wednesday.
U.S. and British authorities forced the bank to pay $2.5 billion in April for manipulation of the Libor benchmark interest rate, a record fine in the Libor probes.
Britain's Financial Conduct Authority said at the time senior Deutsche staff had wrongly claimed German regulator Bafin had prevented them from sharing a critical Bafin report on the bank.
"That the bank was not able to quickly address all the demands is very regrettable," Achleitner was quoted as saying in the summary of an interview to appear in magazine WirtschaftsWoche. "But the supervisory board has up to now not been able to recognise any active efforts to hinder regulators."
Achleitner's comments come a day after Bafin said it would wait for an official response from Deutsche before deciding on consequences for the lender from its investigation into alleged attempts to manipulate benchmark rates such as Libor.
Achleitner downplayed weakness in the bank's shares that followed the April 27 announcement of a new strategy, where the group plans to cut its investment bank and sell its Postbank (>> Deutsche Postbank AG) division on the stock market.
"You can't judge whether a strategy is good or not based on the short-term reaction of the stock market. With the new orientation, Deutsche Bank is returning to its roots. That's truly not anything trivial," he was quoted saying.
(Reporting by Thomas Atkins; Editing by David Holmes)
