At the height of the foreign exchange scandal, when banks had paid millions of dollars in fines and been forced to fire some of their most experienced traders, Zar Amrolia experienced what might well be described as a mid-career crisis.

Amrolia, one of the best-known and successful practitioners in the industry, had put his heart and soul into Deutsche Bank's currencies business for the bulk of his career. Since his appointment as global head of foreign exchange in 2006, he had built Deutsche into a market-leading foreign exchange franchise that was the envy of competitors, topping Euromoney's closely watched FX rankings for nine successive years. He also led several cross-industry initiatives to address changes in regulation and market structure.