Jain curtain call

Anshu Jain has an embarrassment of job options

Deutsche Bank's departing co-chief executive, who previously served as head of its investment bank, can follow so many paths already blazed by his crisis-riddled counterparts.

Take John Thain. A year after leaving Merrill Lynch in 2009, he became CEO of restructured and more modest lender CIT. He's awaiting regulatory approval to acquire OneWest, which would make CIT the first to vault over the $50-billion asset threshold and become by choice a systemically important financial institution.

Alan Schwartz and Huw Jenkins, meanwhile, followed their respective falls from the top of Bear Stearns and UBS' investment bank by effectively taking No 2 spots at smaller players. Jenkins is international chairman of Brazil's BTG Pactual, while Schwartz serves as executive chairman at Guggenheim Partners.

Maybe the world of hedge funds will appeal. Jes Staley, the former boss of JPMorgan's corporate and investment bank, is one of several reformed bankers to go down that trail. He's now at Blue Mountain.

Jain, 52, could play a longer game to get back on top, as Bill Winters did. For a while, Staley's predecessor at JPMorgan advised the authorities on regulation and the future of banking, as well as delving into charitable work. Earlier this year he was named to replace Peter Sands as CEO of Standard Chartered.

Trying new areas of finance is another possibility. Retired Morgan Stanley boss John Mack for one, turned techie, helping fund peer-to-peer operators Orchard and Lending Club, sitting on the latter's board. Bob Diamond, meanwhile, set his sights on investing in African banking after he was ousted from Barclays in 2012.

Bowing out of the industry altogether is always a prerogative, too. It's a route that has of late mostly been reserved for the truly disgraced, however. Think former Merrill boss Stan O'Neal and erstwhile Bank of America chieftain Ken Lewis, who last year was banned from serving as a public company executive for three years.

Jain's shortcomings don't qualify him for that Hall of Shame, which suggests the financial world probably hasn't heard the last of him.