Deutsche Bank’s retail banking sector plans to close 200 branches over the next two years. This means, about a 100 branches of Deutsche Bank and another 100 at Postbank will be closed down. When the German bank took over Postbank, an agreement was signed that stated around 50 Postbank branches could be closed in a year. This announcement does not come as a surprise because the industrial sector as well as various banks in Germany are implementing mass redundancies and rationalisation plans.
Commerzbank and Deutsche Bank are the latest to announce new austerity measures which will lead to local bank closures and layoffs.
While Postbank has 800 branches, Deutsche Bank has around 500.
The branch closures will affect over one third of the 1000 staff currently employed in these branches. Around 350 jobs will be cut in the Bank’s central departments for most private customer business in Bonn and Frankfurt. The move is expected to make the Bank’s customer business in Germany “profitable and sustainable.”
Negotiations and discussions have been on between the trade unions and the bank management regarding cost-cutting measures for some time now. The trade unions have been resisting the restructuring process.
A programme at Deutsche Bank has also been in operation for a while now, wherein about 18,000 full-time positions worldwide out of the present strength of 92,000, are to be eliminated by the end of 2022. The objective is to save about € 3.3 billion.
