India's TCS inches closer to buying Deutsche Bank unit

Mumbai: Tata Consultancy Services, Asia's biggest software exporter by market value, is in advanced talks to acquire a technology services unit of Deutsche Bank AG. The discussions about the Bonn-based Postbank Systems AG are expected to result in a deal with the Indian company by the end of the year.

The pandemic is accelerating moves by global banks and financial services firms to shed their captive technology centers. Tata Consultancy's potential takeover of Postbank's 1,400 employees will help Deutsche Bank CEO Christian Sewing get closer to his job-cuts target.

Negotiations are ongoing and could still be delayed or fall apart, the people said. Tata Consultancy, which has more than 450,000 employees across the world, in 2008 paid $505 million to acquire Citigroup Inc.'s back-office unit in what was then its biggest acquisition. 

Deutsche Bank's Sewing last year unveiled a restructuring plan centered on cutting 18,000 jobs, with about half of those expected in Germany. PB Systems generated 533 million euros ($632 million) in revenue in 2015, according to its latest available annual report. The unit provides IT services to Deutsche Bank's formerly separate retail unit Postbank.

Deutsche Bank is currently merging Postbank's IT with its own, which is expected to render the services provided by PB Systems obsolete by the end of next year. The plan, known internally as Project Unity, is expected to contribute the lion's share to Sewing's goal of cutting 1 billion euros of expenses in the German retail operations.

Deutsche Bank also recently unveiled a plan to move much of its IT into the cloud as part of a deal with Alphabet Inc.'s Google. The bank said in July it expects to sign the contract with Google "within the next few months."