Deutsche Bank, Germany’s largest, has been hit by the global credit crunch so badly that it has issued a memorandum to senior executives telling them that brothel visits and adult channels in hotel rooms cannot be claimed on expenses.

Irish employees of the bank, which has 78,000 workers worldwide, will also
receive the no-naughtiness-on-the-firm’s-plastic missive.

“Deutsche Bank does not approve of any adult entertainments, and such
expenditures will not be reimbursed,” said a memo that was leaked to the
news magazine Spiegel.

It says the directive was aimed at 800 workers in the bank’s communications
and social responsibility department, but variations have been sent to all
workers. The memo further warns that the bank’s credit cards must not be
used for such purposes.

Whether the edict was prompted by a recent upsurge in executives seeking
relief from Deutsche Bank’s sub-prime horrors – more than £2bn in writedowns
so far – via Germany’s vast network of pleasure houses is unclear. Further
belt-tightening at the bank includes the instruction that bosses must
approve taxi journeys in advance, business meals must not exceed £50 per
person, and train rides inside Germany must be second-class if they take
less than one hour.

One further stipulation: employees on overnight flights who are expected to
go to work or attend meetings on arrival must now shower at the airport
instead of booking a hotel. Apparently, there have been “minor
infringements” of late that the bank wants to stamp out.

A Deutsche Bank insider said: “In the good old days, you could pass off a
trip to a knocking-shop as a restaurant if the name wasn’t too obvious. But
we’re in an uptight, locked-down new puritanism now, not helped by sub-prime
or VW.”

At Volkswagen, people have been jailed and fined tens of thousands of pounds
after a secret plan was discovered whereby union bosses were to be paid off
with prostitutes, sex parties and drugs in exchange for an agreement on
downsizing.