Anshu Jain, a senior financial officer best known for assisting German lender Deutsche Bank AG in taking on the major Wall Street businesses, died Saturday night following a five-year battle with cancer, according to his family. He was 59.

Jain, who was born in India, worked over two decades to establish Deutsche Bank into one of the world’s leading universal banks. He was the German institution’s first non-European leader.

In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and the subsequent European debt crisis, Jain urged Deutsche to be Europe’s “last man standing” as U.S. corporations pulled ahead in global banking.

Years of growth into riskier investment banking industries came back to haunt the bank as regulation increased the cost of complicated deals. As co-CEO, he fought to reduce risk and get control of a lengthy line of crises that resulted in billions of dollars in fines.

He left the German lender in 2015 and has been the president of Cantor Fitzgerald in the United States since 2017.

Jain, who was born in the Indian city of Jaipur, received his bachelor’s degree at the University of Delhi before going on to earn his MBA at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.

He was a lifelong vegetarian who enjoyed wildlife photography, safaris in Kenya’s Masaai Mara, and wilderness conservation, according to his family.

He joined Deutsche in 1995 to develop a hedge fund and derivatives section. He eventually overshadowed his boss, then-CEO Josef Ackermann, as head of bond trading and developing markets, and later as head of the investment bank.

He joined Deutsche’s executive board in 2009 and took over as head of the corporate and investment banking business in 2010. He served as co-CEO from 2012 until 2015.