Deutsche Bank Chief Tells Germans: Work Longer and Harder

Deutsche Bank CEO Christian Sewing this week urged Germans to work harder to help restore the country’s economy. “Investors are already doubting our ability to reform, but especially our ability and our will to perform,” Sewing said at the Handelsblatt banking summit in Frankfurt. “More growth in Germany will come only if we also change our attitude to work; if we are prepared to work differently, but overall to work more and harder.” Sewing said that EU citizens work about 34 hours a week on average compared with about 28 hours in Germany.

He argued that Germany should embrace longer work-weeks. “We won’t manage it with an average of 28 hours per week and a pension at 63,” he said. The euro area’s biggest economy has been digesting a slate of negative economic data recently. For starters, the German economy contracted in the second quarter of the year, while at the start of the month, the manufacturing purchasing managers index (PMI), a key indicator of industrial sentiment, flashed negative, marking over a year it’s been in negative territory.