Desiree Fixler is, in her own words, “no wallflower”. When she was hired in 2020 to be head of sustainability at DWS, a German asset manager affiliated to Deutsche Bank, she reckons Asoka Wöhrmann, her boss, must have known the type of person he was taking on. She was a Wall Street veteran. She was battle-hardened, having traded credit derivatives in the run-up to the 2007-09 financial crisis. She had seen the power wielded by regulators. If you pictured somebody who works in sustainability as a soft touch, think again. “I’m hard core, especially when it comes to compliance,” Ms Fixler says.