1. Skip to content
  2. Skip to main menu
  3. Skip to more DW sites

Job fears at Deutsche Bank

September 21, 2012

Deutsche Bank has dismissed a newspaper report about thousands of jobs being cut at the bank as speculation. Germany's biggest bank seeks to trim staff costs in a business overhaul aimed at saving billions of euros.

https://p.dw.com/p/16CFl
Image: picture-alliance/dpa

Deutsche Bank said media speculation about substantial job losses in its German operations was entirely "wrong," and the figures mentioned in the reports were "made up out of thin air."

The German daily newspaper, Süddeutsche Zeitung, reported Friday that between 4,000 and 6,000 jobs in Germany were threatened, as the bank was planning to outsource technical and IT divisions.

In a first phase, some 543 jobs were to go at Deutsche Bank's headquarters in Frankfurt and at the seat of its Postbank subsidiary in Bonn, the newspaper wrote.

In a statement Friday, Deutsche Bank said that the loss of about 500 jobs in Germany was "nothing new" and part of efforts to "integrate" Postbank into the banking group.

Deutsche Bank had been in close talks about staff development with labor unions for the past one and a half years, the bank said, adding that "a series of agreements of interest" had been signed, preventing "material losses" for those affected by staff cuts.

Germany's biggest private bank is planning to reduce annual expenditures by 4.5 billion euros ($5.7 billion) up to 2015. Nearly 40 percent of the savings are to come from reorganizing infrastructure, streamlining computer systems and centralizing procurement.

Under the restructuring plan, some 3,500 jobs, mainly in the bank's investment banking divisions abroad are to be cut.

"Further job cuts beyond what's already been agreed with labor unions are currently not planned," the bank said in the statement.

uhe/mz (dpa, dapd)