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Frankfurt / Main (dpa) - Commerzbank is accelerating its corporate restructuring and, after losing billions in 2020, wants to do significantly better business in the current year.
The newly formed board is aiming for a positive operating result again in 2021.
If all savings plans are implemented in 2024, the bank will earn 2.7 billion euros in day-to-day business.
"We want to become sustainably profitable and shape our own future as an independent force in the German banking market," confirmed the CEO Manfred Knof, who has been in office since January, on Thursday when the MDax group presented its financial statements.
The primary goal is to reduce costs: from around 6.7 billion euros in the previous year, they are expected to decrease by 1.4 billion euros by 2024.
Then better times should dawn again for the shareholders of the institute: A dividend is being sought for the 2023 financial year after several zero rounds.
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Last year, the net loss for Commerzbank totaled around 2.9 billion euros, as the institute had already announced last week.
A year earlier, the bank had earned 585 million euros.
Thus, 2020 brought Commerzbank the highest loss since the financial crisis: In 2009 the minus had totaled more than 4.5 billion euros.
The state saved the bank, which had recently taken over the troubled Dresdner Bank, from collapse with billions in taxes and became its largest shareholder.
According to the bank, the 2020 annual result includes 814 million of the total of 1.8 billion euros in expenses for restructuring the group.
The 2020 result will also be burdened by the fact that the institute is writing off around 1.6 billion euros because the businesses taken over from Dresdner Bank and the Polish MBank did not develop as well as hoped at the time.
The provision for possible setbacks as a result of the corona pandemic was also significantly higher than a year earlier (EUR 620 million) at just under EUR 1.75 billion.
The long-standing Allianz manager Knof, who most recently worked in the private customer business of Deutsche Bank, wants to lead Commerzbank back on the road to success with a tough austerity course.
By the end of 2024, 10,000 of the last 39,500 full-time positions (as of the end of 2020) are to be cut worldwide.
More than 80 percent of the job cuts should be implemented by the end of 2023.
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At the same time, the bank wants to create around 2500 full-time positions.
This is to be done at MBank, among others.
In addition, Commerzbank wants to do more in-house services that were previously outsourced, thereby reducing costs.
So-called back-office activities such as the processing and administration of business are to be relocated to other Eastern European countries.
The bottom line is that Commerzbank will cut 7,500 jobs.
The board of directors is also pushing the pace with the downsizing of branches: 190 of the last 790 branches are to be closed in the current year, and ultimately the network is to include 450 locations.
Together with the online subsidiary Comdirect, which is currently being integrated, the group wants to advance the digitization of its offers.
1.7 billion euros are being invested in IT.
The aim is to further develop the private and corporate customers segment "into an attractive combination of high-performance direct bank and first-class advisory services," it said.
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Foreign business, on the other hand, is shrinking and the institute is giving up 15 locations.
In this area, the bank wants to focus on supporting German medium-sized companies abroad and on foreign customers with business connections to Germany.
Knof took over the management of Commerzbank on January 1st.
His predecessor Martin Zielke resigned after criticism from investors, and the head of the supervisory board was also replaced by ex-Landesbanker Hans-Jörg Vetter.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210211-99-392628 / 3
Commerzbank on the 2020 balance sheet
Communication from Commerzbank 8.1.2021