Deutsche Bank cuts 18,000 jobs worldwide, tells staff to 'clear their desks'

Deutsche Bank – Staff at Deutsche Bank’s London and New York offices left today clutching white envelopes after being told to clear their desks, as the German firm cut 18,000 jobs.

Tearful workers were told to pack up their belongings just hours after the bank revealed a major worldwide restructuring.

Staff at Deutsche Bank’s London office who were told to clear their desks by 11 am today are hitting the nearest pub and holding white envelopes that are reportedly redundancy notices.

Few staff wanted to speak outside the bank’s London office, but trade was picking up at the nearby Balls Brothers pub, with many of the employees thought to be making their way to the bar from the office.

One fund manager who was drinking bubbly inside the bar with his friends said they were not from Deutsche, adding:

‘We are celebrating that we are not at Deutsche.’

One Deutsche employee in London said today: ‘I was terminated this morning. There was a very quick meeting and that was it,’ said an IT worker leaving Deutsche Bank’s London office this morning.

‘I got laid off, where else would I go?’ said one equity sales staff member in London, who had headed to nearby pub.

The company will close its loss-making equities trading business and cut some jobs to shrink its bond and rates trading operations.

Deutsche Bank, which was the first major finance firm to suggest it could leave the UK and move 4,000 jobs out of the country in the event of Brexit, refused to tell MailOnline how many staff in London would be axed.

Sources have estimated it could be well over 3,000 according to eFinancial News, while an IT contractor at the London office said this morning as news broke of the redundancies in London that 100 people had been made redundant from a single floor.

A wave of job cuts now looks set to hit Frankfurt, where recent changes in labour law making it easier to fire people earning €234,000 (£210k) could encourage the bank to cut senior staff.

Yesterday, the Frankfurt-headquartered bank said the mass layoffs would reduce its annual costs by £5.4billion.

The 91,500 worldwide employees are set to be cut by just over 20 per cent, to 74,000, in an unprecedented round of departures for Deutsche.

The firm sacked workers in Sydney, Hong Kong and across the Asia-Pacific region on Monday morning as it launched one of the biggest restructurings of its investment bank since the financial crash.

Meanwhile, an equities professional at the firm’s New York office told eFinancial News: ‘9.30am is when most people in my division have been asked to report to the auditorium to be fired.’

As many were seen leaving the London office with bags, some employees were pictured receiving in a huge delivery of 30 large pizzas at lunchtime from a motorcyclist.

One employee told the Financial Times: ‘This is really sad what is going on right now in the bank, but I guess from top management’s point of view that is what is needed to be done.’

Staff in London were reportedly told just hours after Deutsche Bank announced the overhaul that they had until 11am to pack up their belongings.

One man, who was told his door pass would stop working in a few hours, told The Telegraph’s banking editor Lucy Burton: ‘I’m trying to get my head straight’.

Deutsche has insisted it will not fire its retail employees in Germany – where employment laws are far more rigid – against their will until mid-2021.