Deutsche Bank plans to cut 3,500 jobs through 2025 — mostly back-office roles, the German lender said Thursday.
The headcount trim includes 800 employees the bank cut last April as part of CEO Christian Sewing’s previously announced €2.5 billion cost savings plan, Deutsche said.
Cost cuts are hardly new to Sewing. The CEO laid out a plan in 2019 to cut 18,000 employees by 2021 — dropping its workforce to around 83,000. Since then, however, headcount has inched up to roughly 90,000 again, its highest level in four years.
“Let me stress that cost discipline continues to be our top priority,” Sewing said Thursday, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The bank said it expects to take €400 million in restructuring costs in 2024, down from €566 million last year.
The right-sizing announcement came as Germany’s largest bank reported its fourth-quarter earnings Thursday. Profit at the bank fell 30% over the last three months of 2023, compared with the previous year’s same period.
In perhaps part of its “cost discipline,” Deutsche said Thursday it would return €1.6 billion to investors in the first half of 2024. That includes a €675 million share buyback. The bank said it aims to lift its dividend to €0.45 a share this year, with an eye toward €1 a share by 2025.
In a show of optimism, the bank boosted its target annual revenue to €32 billion by 2025, up from its previous goal of €30 billion.
Sewing, however, tempered that confidence, telling the Financial Times that Deutsche is “still a show-me story because we have missed targets too many times in the past.”
Revenue at Deutsche has a different makeup than it has in years past. The bank’s retail unit surpassed its investment bank as the top revenue driver last year, Deutsche said Thursday.
Momentum in trading, however, “has carried through into 2024, so we’ve had a strong January,” CFO James von Moltke told Bloomberg.
“We also think that the environment now, finally after two years of going backwards, should be much more conducive to corporate finance activities — financings, equity deals, M&A deals,” von Moltke said.
Thursday’s earnings report had its share of hiccups, too. The bank took a €233 million write-down on the book value of Numis, the London-based boutique investment bank Deutsche bought last year for £410 million.
The Deutsche job cuts come after a brutal month of right-sizing — especially at European banks. Barclays announced a plan to shed 5,000 roles, and fellow U.K. lender Lloyds indicated it would let go of 1,600 employees.
