Deutsche Bank is planning to eliminate 440 roles in Dublin, equating to almost three-quarters of its employees and contractors in Ireland, as the unit is caught up belatedly in a massive global jobs cull announced by the German group in 2019, according to sources.
The Frankfurt-headquartered group said in a statement on Tuesday that it plans to “relocate just under 250 roles from Dublin to other centres around the world” as streamlines functions into fewer locations.
The bank said it would be “materially reducing its contractor workforce in Ireland over the course of the year following the natural completion of a number of projects”. It is understood that contractors account for 200 of its approximate 600-strong Irish headcount.
Sources said that 160 of the current roles would continue to exist after the restructuring, suggesting that more than 90 per cent of the contractor roles would disappear.
However, the bank said it planned to add 35 front-office roles over the summer in its Irish corporate banking and data and innovation lab units, bringing total employee numbers to about 200 in Dublin.
Deutsche Bank, founded in 1870, has been in Ireland since 1991, mainly in the area of global transactions banking (GTB), which covers cash management, trade finance, treasury, trust and securities services for global customers. The number of employees in Dublin had doubled in the past decade as it expanded its GTB and global technology and operations hubs in Ireland.
"We understand that the proposed plan will cause uncertainty and concern to impacted colleagues, and we are committed to supporting them through the consultation process," said Mary Campbell, chief country officer of Deutsche Bank Ireland. "Deutsche Bank Ireland said Dublin will continue to be an important centre for the bank."
Restructuring
Sources said in July 2019, as Deutsche Bank announced that it was cutting 18,000 jobs – or 20 per cent of its then global workforce – by 2022, that reductions in Dublin would be minimal. The banking giant, led by chief executive Christian Sewing for the past three years, has gone through a series of restructuring programmes over the past decade.
German banks led a wave of European lenders that set up Irish wholesale banking subsidiaries during the 1990s as the International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) took off.
However, the past decade has seen most of the German banks, including DZ Bank, Helaba and Commerzbank, hand back their Irish licences to the Central Bank, as their parents seek to release capital that is “trapped” in various subsidiaries and streamline their own organisations.
Depfa Bank, the German-founded lender that moved its headquarters to Dublin in 2002 before becoming a casualty of the financial crisis, has been in winddown since 2014.
In March Irish-based EAA Covered Bond Bank, once part of the German lender WestLB, which collapsed during the financial crisis, relinquished its banking licence after an attempt to sell the business fell through a year ago.
