Deutsche Bank leads whole teams in Asia-Pacific as 18,000 job cuts begin | World | New

By Paulina Duran and Sumeet Chatterjee

SYDNEY / HONG KONG (Reuters) – Complete teams at Deutsche Bank Asian traders learned that their positions were gone on Monday as the lender began to cut 18,000 jobs worldwide, as part of one of the biggest reforms of an investment bank. since the financial crisis.

The German bank on Sunday launched the restructuring in Europe, outlining a plan that will ultimately cost 7.4 billion euros ($ 8.31 billion) and will see it drastically reduce its investment bank – a major setback after years of competitive work on Wall Street.

As part of this overhaul, the bank will discontinue its global equity business and will also remove some of its fixed income operations, an area traditionally considered one of its strengths.

While the bulk of the 18,000 job cuts are expected to largely subside in Europe and the United States, the cuts also affected Monday offices in Sydney Hong Kong.

Deutsche Bank gave no geographical breakdown for job cuts when it announced the plan on Sunday.

Bankers in Sydney who left the lender's office Monday confirmed that they were working for Deutsche Bank and were being laid off, but they refused to give their names because they had to return later to sign layoff plans.

A person familiar with the bank's operations in Australia said his team of four equity market specialists had been released, but most members of his M & A team would not be immediately affected .

Deutsche employed approximately 4,700 people in Sydney, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Singapore, and submitted fact sheets on its website.

Before the cuts, his investment banking team for the Asia-Pacific region had about 300 people, and 10 to 15 percent of his workforce will be laid off, almost all in his equity division, according to a leading banker in Asia with direct knowledge of the schemes. .

In Hong Kong, a group of three upset bank employees is photographed next to a large Deutsche Bank logo outside the lender's office, s & # 39; Kissing before hailing a taxi waiting.

A Hong Kong-based stock trader who had been fired said that the mood was "rather gloomy" as people were summoned individually to meetings.

"(There are several rounds of discussions with human resources, then they give you this package and you get out of the building," said the trader.

Several workers were seen leaving offices with large envelopes bearing the logo of the bank.

"If you have a job for me, please let me know but do not ask questions," said one of the candidates who confirmed that he was working for Deutsche Bank, but declined to comment further.

A spokeswoman for Deutsche Bank declined to comment on some departures, saying the bank would communicate directly with employees.

"We understand that these changes are profoundly affecting people's lives and we will do everything in our power to be as responsible and sensitive as possible in implementing these changes," she said.

TO RESTART

President and CEO Christian Sewing, who now wants to focus on the bank's more stable revenue streams, said Sunday that it was the most fundamental transformation of the bank in decades. . "It's a restart," he said.

"We are creating a bank that will be more profitable, slimmer, more innovative and more resilient," he wrote to employees.

The bank will set up a "bad bank" to reduce unwanted badets, worth 74 billion euros of risk-weighted badets.

Sewing will now represent the investment bank on the board in a shift illustrating the decreasing influence of the division.

The CEO had announced a deep restructuring in May when he had promised his shareholders "severe cuts" to the investment bank. This followed Deutsche's failure to accept a merger with rival Commerzbank AG .

(Report by Paulina Duran to SYDNEY, Takashi Umekawa to TOKYO, Sumeet Chatterjee and Alun John to HONG KONG, Anshuman Daga to SINGAPORE, Tom Sims and Hans Seidenstuecker to FRANKFURT, editorial by Jennifer Hughes, writing by Christopher Cushing)