Deutsche Bank plans 'significant' job cuts

Christian Sewing became Deutsche's chief executive earlier this month

Deutsche Bank will make "significant" job cuts as it scales back its corporate and investment banking operations, Germany's biggest lender has said.

Its new chief executive, Christian Sewing, said the job losses were "painful but regrettably unavoidable".

The cuts will mainly fall in US and Asia, Deutsche Bank said.

The comments came as the bank reported a sharp drop in first-quarter corporate and investment bank revenues.

New focus

The BBC understands that thousands of jobs could be at risk.

"These reductions are painful but regrettably unavoidable to ensure our bank's competitiveness in the long run," Mr Sewing said in a statement.

"Deutsche Bank is deeply rooted in Europe - here we want to provide our clients access to global financing and treasury solutions," Mr Sewing said, just weeks after becoming chief executive. "This is what we will focus on more decisively."

This strategy will be a marked reversal from Deutsche Bank's previous one of global investment banking expansion, which it has pursued for the past 30 years.

The measures will incur higher restructuring costs, and include a scaling-back of Deutsche Bank's business with hedge funds.

They come after a review of the investment bank, known internally as Project Colombo, which could yet lead to further cuts.

Mr Sewing, who has been with the bank for his entire career, was previously responsible for its private and commercial bank operations.

Previous chief executive John Cryan was sacked earlier this month. The search for his replacement is understood to have begun after the bank reported an annual loss of €500m at the end of February.

That followed losses of €1.4bn in 2016, and €6.8bn in 2015 after restructuring and litigation costs.

Revenues slide

Deutsche Bank has 97,000 employees overall, with about 40,000 employees in its corporate and investment banking arm.

The bank has 10,000 employees in the US, with the majority of these being employed in corporate and investment banking. In Asia-Pacific, it has 21,000 employees.

Deutsche Bank has long grappled with falling revenues.

For the first quarter of this year, it reported a drop in revenues of 5% to €7bn (£6.1bn), while its corporate and investment bank reported a 13% drop in revenues to €3.8bn.

For the bank as a whole, first quarter net income was €120m, compared with €575m in the previous year.