Deutsche Bank of Germany logged painful losses in the last quarter of 2012, the lender reported on Thursday.

The country's biggest bank ran up a loss of 2.17 billion euros ($2.9 billion) in the period from October to December, down from a profit of 147 million euros in the same period a year earlier.

Poor Q4 results were attributed not least to writedowns of 1.9 billion euros and litigation related charges of one billion euros in total.

Layoffs part of the scheme

Final-quarter losses also impacted Deutsche Bank's bottom line for the whole of 2012, with net profit declining to 611 million euros - a far cry from the over four billion euros earned in the previous year.

The new heads of the bank, Anshu Jain and Jürgen Fitschen, are currently overseeing the biggest restructuring drive the bank has ever witnessed. "The change is inconvenient, but necessary," they said. "It'll keep us busy not just for the next couple of months, but for years to come."

Jain and Fitschen hope to save some 4.5 billion euros annually until 2015 by downsizing the lender's investment banking unit and streamlining operations across the board. Some 1,700 former employees have already gone, hundreds more are expected to follow in the course of this year.

hg/hc   (Reuters, AFP)