Prologue:
How it all began

Josef Ackermann smiled his famous smile, shook my hand and said: "See you again in Frankfurt." Before the CEO of Deutsche Bank, who had just hired me as his new global head of communications, left the coffee shop of the Steigenberger Park Hotel at the end of Düsseldorf's Königsallee boulevard, he asked me if I could get the bill, as he had no cash on him.

Lucky for me, I thought, that I had put a couple of notes in my pockets that morning, although I don't usually carry any cash myself. It was enough for the two cappuccinos and croissants we'd had. "No problem. I'll see to it," I answered, leaving Germany's top banker free to head straight for the black, bullet-proof Mercedes S-class limousine waiting outside to whisk him off to his next appointment.

As I walked back to my office along the tree-lined "Kö", which was showing the first signs of spring, I gradually realized what had just happened. At the age of 59, when many people enter early retirement, I had agreed to embark on the greatest adventure of my professional life. A passionate journalist, I had declined all offers to change sides for thirty years, but now, in less than an hour, agreed to manage communications for Germany's most controversial company and most controversial executive.

Everything had gone so incredibly fast. Just two days before, an old acquaintance of mine had asked me out of the blue whether I would be interested in the position. More out of curiosity as to how seriously this was meant than anything else I had signalled interest in principle. It was dead serious, as I had realized only one day later when I was asked to meet Josef Ackermann the next morning for breakfast. Now I really had to give the idea some earnest thought.

Journalism has always been my favorite profession. But after serving 16 years as editor-in-chief of WirtschaftsWoche, Germany's leading business magazine, the job had become a little humdrum. In addition, the deepening crisis of the print media was increasingly turning it into a rear guard battle - not a pleasant prospect for someone who had only known the offensive so far.

These feelings were reinforced by Deutsche Bank's special appeal. Across the length and breadth of Germany, no company attracts even nearly as much public attention. Founded in Berlin in 1870 by 'highest decree of his Majesty the King of Prussia', the bank is not only the country's premier financial institution and the only one with a really global scope, it is also Germany's most important and most powerful company, a national institution with almost mythical status. Its CEO is widely seen as a kind of "shadow chancellor of the Republic".

I felt close to the bank because of my many years as a customer, but even more because of the years I spent working as financial correspondent for Germany's leading news magazine Der Spiegel in the second half of the nineteen-eighties, covering Deutsche. Just weeks before Alfred Herrhausen, the then chairman of the board, was murdered by a left wing terrorist group, the so-called Red Army Faction, I had written a cover story on him titled "The Lord of Money". Not least for that reason, his death had touched me deeply.

At the time, globalisation, British prime minister Maggie Thatcher's "big bang", and the economic liberalization introduced by US president Ronald Reagan had ushered in the golden age of finance and the ascension of investment bankers to the position of "Masters of the Universe". Those were exciting times for a young business journalist, and I always kept fond memories of them. The prospect of reconnecting to that time was also a factor in my late change of career.

Then, of course, there was an excellent pay package and above all - Josef Ackermann. Since his disastrous V for victory sign in a Düsseldorf courtroom, many Germans saw in him the chief villain of the nation.

In the spring of 2000, the British telecommunications giant Vodafone had taken over its German rival Mannesmann. Resistance there had been vehement, and the value of the company on the stock market had risen considerably in the process. As a reward, the members of the supervisory board's top committee, among them the head of Deutsche Bank, authorized special bonuses of 57 million Deutschmarks for several top figures of the company.

A payment of that sort was nothing exceptional for Ackermann and the amount of money in question rather small by international standards. But the Düsseldorf state prosecutors were unimpressed by Anglo-Saxon customs. They accused the CEO of Deutsche Bank along with the other committee members of "a particularly serious case of embezzlement", a crime that carries a jail sentence of up to ten years.

When the case opened at the Düsseldorf Regional Court on January 21, 2004 "probably the most misinterpreted press photo" in German business history was taken, as Rainer Hamm, a criminal lawyer involved in the case, put it. The judges were late to arrive in courtroom L111, and as the defendants waited, they passed the time with small talk. The conversation turned to the American pop star Michael Jackson. Five days earlier, at the start of his child molestation trial, Jackson had first kept the court waiting and then made the V for victory sign upon leaving. Josef Ackermann imitated the gesture as a joke and was caught on camera by a photographer of the German news agency dpa.

The image was soon all over the media and led to a storm of outrage in Germany. "Obscene" and "an abyss of arrogance" commented Süddeutsche Zeitung, a leading national daily. "Ackermann has lost, even if he wins the trial," wrote Der Spiegel in a cover story titled 'The Arrogance of the Powerful'.

The fatal misunderstanding could conceivably have been cleared up by a swift public explanation from Ackermann. But his comments as he left the courtroom later describing Germany as "the only country where those responsible for creating value are punished" made this impossible. Those comments, wrote Süddeutsche Zeitung, show the Deutsche Bank CEO's contempt for all those who "create value by working hard for little pay". Overnight, Josef Ackermann had become the ugly face of capitalism in Germany. His acquittal in late November 2006, almost three years later, in return for a payment of 3.2 million euros, did not help much to improve that image.

It could not get any worse, I thought, when pondering whether to accept Ackermann's offer. The only direction his popularity rating could go was up. Not a bad starting point to take on a communications job.

What's more, Josef Ackermann and I have much in common. We are the same age, almost to the day (I am one day older), and we both grew up in small, rural communities, which had once been prosperous but then suffered from profound structural change during our youth, due to the precursors of globalisation. We were both brought up by strict but loving parents from the Catholic middle class who taught us to be ambitious, industrious and open-minded and take responsibility for our actions. Having learned Latin and classical Greek in high school and studied economics, we also received the same education. In short: We had a natural understanding between us that did not require many words. That tipped the scales and finally made me change sides.

A story in WirtschaftsWoche in August 2000 had led to Josef Ackermann's early nomination as the next head of Deutsche Bank, almost two years before the term of his predecessor, Rolf-Ernst Breuer, was over. Dirk Schütz, a colleague of mine, had reported that Thomas Fischer, a fellow board member of the Swiss national, also harbored great ambitions to get the top job at Deutsche.

Ackermann must have been alarmed by the story. His hopes of becoming number one had already been destroyed once before at SKA (Schweizerische Kreditanstalt), today Credit Suisse, his former employer, and he had left the bank for Deutsche. He didn't want to go through such a sad experience again.

The WirtschaftsWoche-story also stirred up Deutsche's investment bankers in London around Edson Mitchell, head of securities trading. They wanted to see someone leading the bank who understands and wholeheartedly supports them and their business. Their only candidate was Josef Ackermann. After the summer break they forced a debate on Breuer's succession. Most management board members feared this debate would drag on for two years and Tessen von Heydebreck, the most senior among them, proposed to take a vote right away. The board, Fischer included, voted for Ackermann as their next leader. Fischer later took the helm at WestLB, then Germany's largest regional bank.

Up until our breakfast at Park Hotel, Josef Ackermann and I had seen each other a few times only. I remember a short meeting in November 2003 at a welcome party for Jean-Claude Trichet, the new head of the European Central Bank (ECB), at Schlosshotel Kronberg near Frankfurt. We had some small talk after dinner, but that was it.

The next time we had met on a weekend at the end of March 2005 in still snowed-in Kitzbühel in the Tyrolean Alps. The Holtzbrinck publishing group, to which WirtschaftsWoche belongs, had invited him as special guest...