Commerzbank confirms to axe over 5,000 jobs

Management and employees' representatives at Commerzbank, Germany's second-biggest bank, reached agreement Wednesday on cutting over 5,000 jobs during the next three years. "Together with the employees' representatives we have found a way to achieve considerable cost reductions, on the one hand, and to secure our competitiveness and earnings power through investment, on the other," board member and human resources chief Ulrich Seiber said in a statement. Commerzbank announced in January that it would axe 4,000 to 6,000 jobs -- or more than one in 10 members of its workforce -- over the next three years as it tots up the toll from the financial and sovereign debt crises. Around 5,200 positions will be eliminated under the agreement with employees, but no forced job cuts will be made until 2016 if enough people leave voluntarily. The bank had earlier decided 800 jobs would go from its assets unit and 500 from German subsidiaries. It was decided Wednesday that around half of the remaining 3,900 cuts would come from the private clients segment. But Commerzbank also reaffirmed that it plans to invest 2 billion euros to realise its strategic goals and as many as 1,000 jobs could be created. Sieber said Commerzbank would try to meet the cuts target without resorting to forcing people from jobs, both by internal transfers and support to find employment elsewhere. Commerzbank, which last month posted a first-quarter loss due to heavy restructuring costs, had around 45,000 employees at the end of March.