Deutsche Bank faces heated AGM as board squabble escalates

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Deutsche Bank appears headed for another stormy shareholder meeting in three weeks' time following public squabbling in its supervisory board and the ejection of the board's member tasked with clearing up past scandals. Germany's biggest lender, struggling to extract itself from regulatory and legal tangles that have already cost it billions of dollars, announced late on Thursday the resignation Georg Thoma, a top financial lawyer who headed the supervisory board’s Integrity Committee. Thoma's resignation comes days after a dispute in the supervisory board surfaced in a German newspaper over what some members viewed as Thoma's over-zealousness in tackling the scandals. Weekly Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung had quoted deputy supervisory board head Alfred Herling as saying Thoma had demanded ever-wider internal investigations, involving increasing numbers of lawyers. Deutsche Bank will face questions over the issue at its annual shareholder meeting on May 19, said Klaus Nieding, Vice President of shareholder advocacy group DSW. "It is absurd that the supervisory board was no longer in agreement on the amount of supervision needed," Nieding said, adding that Thoma's resignation was probably the right move, given the degree of internal conflict. "However, we will not allow the wheels to be turned back in clarifying the scandals," he added. Deutsche Bank did not give a reason for the departure of Thoma, whose committee was responsible for probes of former executive board members' behaviour in clearing up the bank's role in an interest rate-rigging scandal, where Deutsche Bank's cooperation with authorities was criticised. "The supervisory board is determined to continue its work of investigating possible misconduct and to draw lessons for the future," the board's chairman, Paul Achleitner, said in the statement announcing Thoma's resignation. A person familiar with the situation told Reuters on Friday the supervisory board's nominating committee had unanimously agreed to ask Thoma to resign, with the full board voting in favour of that move in a telephone conference on Thursday. "You had the impression that Mr Thoma was not interested in a solution but rather in an investigation of the investigation," the person said. "There was a climate of mistrust." Deutsche Bank said Thoma, whose term was due to expire in 2018, will conclude his duties on May 28, in the week following the shareholder meeting. Thoma was not available for comment. (Reporting by Harro ten Wolde, Jonathan Gould, Andreas Kroener and Alexander Huebner; Editing by James Dalgleish and Giles Elgood)