The outgoing chief executive of embattled asset manager DWS has defended the Deutsche Bank-owned company’s sustainable investment strategy amid investigations into “greenwashing” by US and German authorities.
“DWS had clearly positioned itself to make ESG a core part of its strategy. We never made a secret of the fact that it would take effort. Nor did we ever say that we had already reached our goal,” Asoka Wöhrmann told the annual shareholders’ meeting on Thursday, in his first public address since resigning last week following a police raid on DWS’s Frankfurt offices.
He went on to assert that the nearly 25 per cent slump in DWS’s share price in the months since whistleblower Desiree Fixler alleged that the company’s criteria for labelling ESG investments was flawed, was “not justified”.
“The topic of sustainability is far too significant and far too important for us to be OK with it being instrumentalised by individuals for personal gain,” Wöhrmann added.
Wöhrmann, who will step down at the end of the AGM and hand over to Deutsche Bank’s Stefan Hoops, has also been criticised for the use of a personal email address to conduct business in a former role, and was scrutinised for a €160,000 payment made to him by a client, which he explained as a failed attempt to purchase a Porsche car.
Although DWS chair Karl von Rohr told the meeting that Wöhrmann was leaving by mutual agreement, people close to the company told the Financial Times that plans to replace the executive had been in train for some time, and were accelerated after the public raid last week, during which prosecutors gathered physical and digital evidence.
Von Rohr confirmed that Wöhrmann was still negotiating his severance pay and that compensation could be deferred pending the outcome of investigations.
However he praised Wöhrmann’s record at DWS, saying he had “successfully established the firm as a leading European asset manager with global reach”.
Following Fixler’s complaint, DWS changed its ESG criteria. In its 2021 annual report, published in March 2022, DWS reported only €115bn in “ESG assets” for 2021 — 75 per cent less than a year earlier when it stated that €459bn in assets were “ESG integrated”.
In his speech, Wöhrmann admitted that the “definition of sustainable energy today is more complex and even more multi-layered than it was just a few months ago”.
“Especially in the coming quarters, these issues are likely to be reflected in the performance of ESG products.”
