Time warp

To lose one chief executive may be regarded as a misfortune, to lose two in a week looks like carelessness. That comment, freely adopted from Oscar Wilde, applies to the German banking industry. The carelessness is found in the industry’s structure - a cross between 1960 and 2007. Thomas Fischer stepped down from the top spot at WestLB last Thursday. Fischer seems to have forgotten to monitor the bank’s trading desk, or to tell the board about E240m of losses. Then on Monday, Stefan Ortseifen r...