Deutsche Bank has started to lay off employees following an announcing of its restructuring plans. Employees all over the world, including in Sydney, Hong Kong, London, New York and Bengaluru were given letters on Monday along with a month's salary.

The bank had announced that, as a part of its strategy, 18,000 employees will be laid off out of the total 74,000 by 2022 as a step towards lowering the adjusted costs by a quarter to $19 million. The bank closed a major part of its trading business, thus affecting the employees, especially in Sydney and Hong Kong. A regional breakdown of the cuts was not provided by the Chief Executive Christian Sewing, but he did clarify that the cuts were not concentrated in one area.

Deutsche Bank has planned to cut all of its operations in the trading business, and some of them in the fixed income operations, according to a Reuters report. Few employees have been handed over the letter already while some others are held back to help with the winding down of the operations.

Deutsche Bank is expected to report a loss of $2.8 million in its second quarter due to the costs related to restructuring. Sewing said that the bank needs to focus on its key strengths, like improving asset management, currency trading, corporate cash management and trade finance. The bank will be withdrawing completely from its global equities sales and trading business, but will continue offering some services like share underwriting for clients.

(Edited by: Ishita Gupta)