At Deutsche Bank’s 2011 annual meeting, then-chief executive Josef Ackermann acknowledged the need to address a complete lack of female representation on the bank’s executive committee. Juergen Fitschen, the bank's current co-CEO alongside Anshu Jain, today reiterated that pledge.

Earlier in 2011, Ackermann had courted controversy when he told a press conference that having more women on the German bank's board would make it "prettier and more comfortable". At the bank's annual general meeting three months later he went someway to placating his critics when he said: "We do not have any women on the group executive committee of the management board. We know this needs to change and it will change."