As Josef Ackermann heads off into the sunset of semi-retirement after a decade at the helm of Deutsche Bank – and as Anshu Jain slips into his shoes – it is a good time to look back at the success or otherwise of the Deutsche Bank “project”.

The plan, to transform Deutsche Bank from a large German commercial bank into a global investment banking powerhouse, was hatched back in 1995 when the bank hired swathes of traders from Merrill Lynch and investment bankers from what was then SG Warburg. But it reached its apotheosis in the past decade. In 2002, Ackermann, who had been hired from Credit Suisse to run the investment bank in 1996, took over as group chief executive, and the little-known Jain had only recently taken over the running of Deutsche Bank's giant markets business after the untimely death of Edson Mitchell at the end of 2000.