As German bank Deutsche Bank announced that it is axing 18,000 jobs globally following the restructuring plan on Sunday, nearly 4,700 staff in Tokyo, Hong Kong and Singapore, besides Sydney will be affected.
The plan said the exercise will cost 7.4 billion euros ($8.31 billion) and a dramatic scale-down of operations of its global equities business and some fixed income operations. The morning when Sydney offices opened first, the staff were found leaving the office in big numbers and some of them confirmed to the media outside that they had been sacked.
A report said the bank's equity capital markets team was asked to leave while the mergers and acquisitions (M&A) team was not affected immediately. The bank has some 300 investment banking teams in the Asia-Pacific region and it is learnt that 15 per cent of them will be hit by the new announcement.
Deutsche Bank CEO Christian Sewing, in his email on Sunday to the staff said, "This is a restart... We are creating a bank that will be more profitable, leaner, more innovative and more resilient."
Sewing had flagged the restructuring move in May, promising shareholders "tough cutbacks" soon after the ailing investment bank's move to merge with rival Commerzbank AG failed.
The bank plans to focus on corporate banking, forex, M&A deals, asset management and private banking in the future to bring down risk though competition in these areas is already stiff. It plans to invest 13 billion euros in technology alone by 2022 to reinforce its standing in these areas.
