Net profit at Germany's biggest lender tumbled 65 percent year on year between July and September, Deutsche Bank said in its third-quarter earnings report Wednesday.

Bottom-line income amounted to €229 million ($262.7 million), down from €649 million a year ago, but still beat expectations voiced by analysts in a Reuters poll.

Revenues shrank by 9 percent to €6.2 billion.

Mindful of past years when it was described as a threat to European and global financial stability, the lender highlighted a so-called CET1 capital ratio — measuring its buffer to absorb potential losses — of 14 percent, slightly higher than the previous quarter.

Deutsche Bank is still reeling from the aftermath of the global financial crisis and the debt crisis that hit the 19-member eurozone. On top of that, the lender has been confronted with multibillion-dollar fines for its involvement in several financial scandals.

Fighting on many fronts

Deutsche has faced stronger competition from international rivals seeing its market share in investment banking drop as several management reshuffles have tried to address the recent lack of profitability.

The bank's new CEO, Christian Sewing, said Wednesday he was confident the lender would be able to log a full-year positive balance sheet for 2018.

"We're on track to be profitable in 2018, for the first time since 2014," he said in a statement.

In its quarterly report, Deutsche said it had cut some 700 positions between July and September, bringing the total workforce to 94,717. As part of a larger cost-cutting drive, the bank confirmed its goal of reducing the workforce to fewer than 93,000 by the end of the year and to under 90,000 by the end of 2019.

hg/tr (Reuters, AFP)