By Jenny Strasburg 

Deutsche Bank AG executives have zeroed in on plans in recent weeks to eliminate close to 10,000 jobs, or about one in 10 employees, as part of moves to accelerate cost-cutting, according to people familiar with internal bank discussions.

The latest plan, with cuts that likely would extend into 2019, follows months of thorny debate over how fast and deep job losses should be at the beleaguered German lender. The process has divided senior executives and left investors unconvinced.

The bank's shares have fallen by nearly a third this year and are at their lowest since a crisis of confidence hit the bank in late 2016.

High-level clashes over staffing and budgets and conflicting opinions from outside investors and bank executives reveal the depth of Deutsche Bank's continuing struggles.

The lender's supervisory board and senior executives will confront investors Thursday in Frankfurt at its annual shareholder meeting. They will face a proposal to break up the company and probing questions about last month's chief executive handoff and the tough choices the lender has to make.

It has been a messy year for Deutsche Bank. The April 8 ouster of CEO John Cryan in the middle of his management contract shook employees and appeared botched to some clients and investors.

Less than two weeks earlier, Mr. Cryan told Deutsche Bank's 97,100 employees in a public memo that he was "absolutely committed" to the job, hoping to draw support from the supervisory board, people involved in internal discussions say.

Instead, the board ousted the Briton, replacing him with a German Deutsche Bank lifer, Christian Sewing.

Ahead of the bank's April 26 first-quarter earnings call, Deutsche's prolonged efforts to get a grip on head count sparked a last-minute debate. Executives talked about announcing plans to cut 5,000 jobs. However, some worried that number would underwhelm investors, according to people briefed on the private discussions, and the bank elected not to cite a number.

Late last year, battles over 2018 budgeting were contentious, leaving executives frustrated, people close to the process say. One internal exercise in November required business heads to propose their own head counts for 2018, which would be considered alongside the bank's overall cost targets.

After repeatedly missing targets, executives told investors last year they would do better. They aimed to end 2018 with fewer than 95,000 employees, according to internal figures discussed with The Wall Street Journal.

However, business heads in November were actually proposing to expand the overall staff--adding around 5,000 more than the new target--to almost 100,000 employees companywide. At the time, investment-banking co-heads Garth Ritchie and Marcus Schenck--known to some colleagues as "Garcus"--wanted to add around 700 employees from their most recent head count, the internal proposals show.

Write to Jenny Strasburg at jenny.strasburg@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

May 23, 2018 09:21 ET (13:21 GMT)