So far, the bank had announced cuts mainly abroad due to the global crisis in the sector. The institute has so far been coy about its plans. Employee representatives are nevertheless already preparing for cuts, as the head of the group works council, alfred herling, told the dpa news agency. It is still unclear where personnel cuts are to be made.
A group spokesman rejected the impression that 4,000 to 6,000 jobs alone could be eliminated by merging the IT systems in the area of downstream services, such as in the processing of banking transactions. This "speculation" is wrong, the number is made up out of thin air. He confirmed, however, that the group intends to bundle the downstream services of the postbank, norisbank and deutsche bank brands into a new unit. "There are currently no plans to reduce staff beyond what has already been agreed with employee representatives," the spokesman explained.
Deutsche bank wants to save 770 million euros in costs in the long term through the integration of postbank alone. The newspaper gave the figure of 543 jobs to be cut in the first stage, 20 percent of them in frankfurt, 80 percent at the postbank headquarters in bonn. According to the german bank, this is nothing new – even if the company does not want to comment on the specific figure.
In the course of the integration of postbank, deutsche bank has been talking to employee representatives for a year and a half about personnel development in the coming years, said the spokesman. A "series" of partial interest settlements have already been concluded. "In this respect, there is no material new situation in this area."According to a framework social plan agreed last year, redundancies for operational reasons are excluded at postbank until 2014.
The two ceos anshu jain and jurgen fitschen had announced last week that they wanted to cut annual costs in the group by 4.5 billion euros by 2015. According to their own statements, they want to focus on material costs and reduce expensive duplicate structures. But they also hinted at staff reductions. It will not go without pain, said fitschen. First, however, reliable figures for the individual business areas had to be available, after which discussions were to be held with the employee representatives.
"With the sums involved, we can’t do without job cuts," said works council head herling, who also sits on the supervisory board of the dax company. "We’re not blue-eyed: it’s not feasible to recoup the savings only through material costs."Among the employees there is no fear, but "tense expectation". Employees insist on having their say. "The board has assured us that as soon as it has clarity, it will approach us early on. We’ll take him at his word," said herling.
The group employed around 100,000 full-time staff worldwide at the end of june. In july, the institute had already announced that 1,900 jobs were to be cut this year, mainly abroad, 1,500 of them in investment banking. Profits in the sector are no longer as high as in many previous years due to the crisis on the markets.