Germany's biggest bank said it has achieved solid results recently but also flagged up significant negative effects on Q4 results, while also announcing further restructuring changes.

Deutsche Bank, Germany’s biggest bank, said today it has achieved “solid operational results” in October and November across all its core businesses, while also announcing that it has completed the formal set-up of a “non-core operations unit”.

The bank, meanwhile, also warned investors that fourth quarter results are likely to be hit significantly by a number of one-off items and spending programmes, although it said it was confident of hitting targets.

“Our 4Q2012 results will include a number of specific items, for example, the already announced costs-to-achieve for our Operational Excellence and Postbank integration programmes, negative impacts from de-risking and valuation adjustments to certain of our assets as well as charges related to our GTB [global transaction banking] business activities in the Netherlands,” Deutsche Bank said in a statement.

“Our year-end closing activities including impairment reviews and the review of provisioning levels, are still ongoing. However, we currently expect these specific items to have a significant negative impact on the bank’s earnings in 4Q2012,” it said.

At its wealth management side, the bank has recently announced it is integrating businesses in Switzerland to cut costs and boost margins. The entire business will be bundled under the umbrella of Deutsche Bank (Switzerland) Ltd, involving the full integration of Bank Sal. Oppenheim jr & Cie (Switzerland), its group subsidiary, which will be completed by the end of 2013.

Non-core

The non-core operations unit was set up last month and is fully operational. Assets identified for the NCOU segment, as of 30 September, stood at €122 billion (around $159.5 billion), with a pro-forma Basel 3 risk-weighted asset equivalent of €125 billion.

Deutsche also issued preliminary restated financial data that arose as a result of setting up the NCOU. The restatement includes a “refinement2 in coverage costs between corporate banking and securities, CB&S) and GTB.

“The reallocation of these costs resulted in €83 million of additional costs for GTB in 2011 and a corresponding reduction in CB&S costs during that period, in each case as restated to reflect the new segment structure,” the bank said.

As reported in September, the Frankfurt-listed bank aims for its newly integrated asset and wealth management division to increase assets under management to around €1 trillion (around $1.28 trillion) by 2015 from around €800 billion. The developments of the AWM segment were designed to “fully exploit the potential” of its €800 billion of AuM. It intends to double its pre-tax income at the AWM unit to around €1.7 billion, it said in September.