Florian Drinhausen, general counsel at Deutsche Bank. Handout photo.

Germany's Deutsche Bank on Tuesday said it is ending its two-year experiment with co-general counsel and will hand the leadership of the legal department over to Florian Drinhausen early next year.

Drinhausen joined the bank in 2014 as GC for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. He became head of global governance last year. Prior to joining Deutsche, he was a partner at Linklaters for 10 years.

Karl von Rohr, Deutsche's Bank's management board member for legal and labor director, said in a statement that he was delighted that the bank found an internal successor. He said Drinhausen “is an excellent lawyer and a very experienced manager, who is very familiar with the bank and the challenges we are facing.”

The challenges include cost-cutting, ongoing legal issues, a planned merger of Deutsche and Postbank in Germany and preparation for an IPO of Deutsche's asset management business.

The bank said Drinhausen, 49, who was not available for comment, will take over the duties of Frankfurt-based co-general counsel Christof von Dryander on Jan. 1. And he will take over the entire legal department on March 31, when London-based co-general counsel Simon Dodds departs. A bank spokesperson said it is not yet known where Dryander and Dodds are going, but that “the timing was right” for the change.

The co-general counsel were named two years ago, at a time when Deutsche was besieged with legal problems over misconduct. The two replaced Richard Walker, a former head of the Enforcement Division at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, who is now at King & Spalding, and was GC of the bank from 2001 to 2015.

The co-GCs managed to significantly reduce the legal burden on Deutsche Bank.

CEO John Cryan, in an Oct. 26 statement pertaining to the bank's third-quarter financial report, praised the legal department. “They have quietly resolved several important cases,” he said. “Of the 20 cases that accounted for approximately 90 percent of our financial litigation risks at the start of 2016, we have since either partially or completely closed 13—with only a marginal incremental cost impact this year.”

The financial report showed that the bank's litigation charges along with restructuring and severance expenses were significantly lower in the third quarter, while profits more than doubled to nearly $560 million in the quarter.

The major settlement this year was a $7.2 billion deal in January with the U.S. Department of Justice over allegations that the bank misled investors in its sale of residential mortgage-backed securities.

Other recent legal problems at Deutsche Bank have included:

• A $37 million settlement last December with the SEC and the state of New York over allegations that the bank violated securities laws with misleading use of “dark pool” technology in private securities trading.

• A $41 million civil penalty in May this year by the Federal Reserve Board for violating bank secrecy and anti-money laundering laws.

• A $190 million preliminary settlement in September in a class action suit over foreign exchange rate price-fixing.

• And most recently, a $220 million settlement last month with 45 states over the bank's role in the Libor scandal.