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Commerzbank headquarters in Frankfurt am Main
Photo: Frank Rumpenhorst / dpa
After a profit at the beginning of the year, Commerzbank slipped into the red in the second quarter.
The reasons are expenses for the group restructuring and depreciation for a major project that has been stopped.
The bottom line was that the bank made a loss of 527 million euros from April to June, as the institute announced.
A year earlier, the institute had earned 183 million euros in the same period.
The operating result in the past second quarter was 32 million euros.
Analysts had expected an operating result of 56 million euros and a consolidated loss of 504 million euros.
For the year as a whole, Commerzbank, whose largest shareholder is the German state, continues to expect a positive operating result.
The CEO Manfred Knof, who has been in office since January 1, expressed his satisfaction: “We achieved a solid operating result in the first half of the year.
The implementation of the strategy is right on track. "
Massive job cuts in Germany
Knof is currently fundamentally restructuring Commerzbank.
240 branches in Germany are to be closed this year.
After the restructuring of the group has been completed, 450 of the 790 branches are to be left.
By the end of 2024, the Board of Management wants to reduce the number of full-time positions across the group from around 39,500 to 32,000.
Every third job in Germany is lost.
Whole departments are closed or outsourced.
The aim of the management is to reduce the total costs to 5.3 billion euros by the end of 2024.
That would be around 20 percent less than in 2020. But the renovation costs.
The cost situation is already tense, for example due to fee reimbursements to customers.
The loss in the second quarter was also due to the fact that the bank had to write off around 200 million euros because the bank decided to stop outsourcing securities processing.
The second quarter was better than at Commerzbank at the larger competitor Deutsche Bank.
The bottom line was that it generated a profit of 692 million euros from April to June.
mmq / Reuters / dpa