Deutsche Bank AG chief executive officer Josef Ackermann says that governments should give up their stakes in banks after state-led bailouts calm financial markets.
"Well-defined exit strategies need to be formulated and implemented," Mr. Ackermann, writing as chairman of the Institute of International Finance, said in a letter addressed to President Bush before a Nov. 14-15 Washington meeting of world leaders.
Companies such as Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC and American International Group Inc. have received emergency state funding in return for ownership stakes.
But a permanent, larger role for the public sector in financial companies would bring "widespread inefficiencies,'' hurting the chances for a renewal of growth in output and jobs, Mr. Ackermann said in his letter, posted Monday on the IIF Web site.
The leaders of the Group of 20 industrial and emerging countries are to meet in Washington this week amid a worsening recession. The world's biggest industrialized economies will all contract next year for the first time in more than half a century as financial-market paralysis leaves companies and consumers starved of credit, the International Monetary Fund forecast this month.
