William Broeksmit

Recently retired executive at Deutsche Bank AG (DBK) who worked at Merrill Lynch in the 1990s with Anshu Jain, now Deutsche Bank’s co-chief executive officer. Broeksmit had two stints at Frankfurt-based Deutsche Bank, Europe’s biggest investment bank by revenue, first from 1996 to 2001, then from 2008 until his retirement last February. He worked as an independent consultant in the interim. When he rejoined the bank in 2008 it was in a newly created position, head of portfolio risk optimization. Broeksmit “was a pioneer in interest rate swaps” while at Continental Bank in Chicago “and brought his expertise to Merrill Lynch." At Merrill Lynch, Broeksmit’s work on interest rate swaps drew the attention of Jain, who had joined the firm in 1988 and was looking to sell more products to hedge funds. Interest rate swaps are contracts to exchange fixed-rate payments for floating-rate ones over a period of years. Broeksmit had been recruited to Merrill several years earlier by Edson Mitchell, a former head of fixed income who also moved to Deutsche Bank and was a mentor of Jain as well.