Deutsche Bank Is Said to Pay $6 Million to Settle Colin Fan Suit

(Bloomberg) -- Deutsche Bank AG agreed to pay Colin Fan, the former co-head of its investment banking unit, about $6 million to settle his suit against the firm, according to a person with knowledge of the discussions.

Fan sued the German bank last year for about $13 million because it had canceled a bonus of unvested shares after his departure in 2015. Deutsche Bank said at the time that the firm canceled the shares after a probe found Fan's personal trades violated conflict-of-interest rules. The person with knowledge of the settlement asked not to be identified because the details weren't public.

Deutsche Bank said in court documents last year that it terminated Fan's employment, and that he had to forfeit the bonus payments because of the disputed investments in credit index-linked structured notes that the bank was involved in issuing. Fan may have stood to reap $9 million on a roughly $1 million investment, a person familiar with the trade said at the time of the bank investigation in 2016.

Fan, who joined SoftBank Group Corp. as part of the Japanese firm's push into asset management, started at Deutsche Bank in 1998 and rose through the trading business. By 2009, when the scrutinized deals began, the Harvard graduate was global head of credit trading and later became co-head of the overall investment bank division.

The Wall Street Journal reported the settlement amount earlier Wednesday. Olayinka Fadahunsi, a spokesman for the Frankfurt-based lender, declined to comment. Fan didn't return an email requesting comment.

To contact the reporter on this story: William Mathis in New York at wmathis2@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Michael J. Moore at mmoore55@bloomberg.net, Dan Reichl

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