Wednesday’s Financial Times Deutschland (FTD) newspaper reported that Ackermann, who handed the reins over to the new leadership just a month ago, bad-mouthed them to a small group of colleagues.

The paper said reports of his remarks had caused uproar within the bank – coming as they do just as the pair are dealing with a halving of profits in the second quarter of the year, as well as the Libor scandal.

Ackermann, who led the bank for ten years and was very publicly the face of Germany’s biggest lender, supposedly warned against risks from investment banking, the FTD said.

Now, with Deutsche Bank firmly embroiled in the Libor fixing scandal, where base interest rates were manipulated wholesale by a group of international banks, Ackermann feels proven correct, the paper said. Jain admitted on Tuesday that a “small number of its employees” – but no executive board member – had been involved in the scandal.

Deutsche Bank had nothing to say about its former manager’s comments and while a spokesman for Ackermann denied them, the FTD stood by its story.

The bank is cutting nearly 2,000 jobs, largely in the investment banking sector, in an attempt to save €350 million, while a further €500 million should be saved by the integration of Postbank.

Where the rest of the €3 billion savings will be made, was not clear on Tuesday. Jain and Fitschen said they would present a full strategy including a vaguely described “change in business model” in September.

The Local/hc