Anshu Jain: A sporting chance at the top slot

BS PEOPLE/ Anshu Jain

You can take an Indian out of India, but can’t take India — or, cricket for that matter — out of an Indian, as the cliché goes. Deutsche Bank’s cricket team captain, Anshu Jain, has been the focus of global media ever since he took charge as head of corporate and investment banking.

His love of cricket and golf is seen as a sign of his competitive spirit and his ambition to win, wrote Agence France Presse. Of course, Jain has also combined a love for sports with savvy business acumen — He was part of the hugely popular Indian Premier League with a stake in Mumbai Indians, which he later sold.

He is now seen as a prime candidate to be chief executive of Deutsche Bank, the global media is convinced. While citing an analyst as describing the London-based Jain as the ‘crown prince’ of the bank, a Bloomberg report also highlighted the fact that not being German and his inability to speak the language fluently would be a hindrance to his ascendance to the top slot.

Born in 1963 in Jaipur, Jain attended the Sri Ram College of Commerce in New Delhi before doing an MBA in finance from University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He joined the German bank in 1995 from Merrill Lynch and rose within the ranks to the bank’s management board last year.

He is responsible for more than three-fourths of the bank’s profit, including fixed income, and helped the bank double its debt sales and trading revenue between 2000 and 2009. Incidentally, the bank’s India unit was an arranger in nine of the ten overseas bond issuances by banks since January 1.

Still, Jain has managed to retain his connections with India as a member of working groups to advise the Indian government t on inward investment, according to the bank’s website. Clearly, this global banker still pads up for India.