Deutsche Bank, Germany's biggest lender, warned on Thursday that its fourth-quarter earnings will take a big hit from restructuring costs.

Deutsche Bank, Germany's biggest lender, warned on Thursday that its fourth-quarter earnings will take a big hit from restructuring costs.

The reporting period from October to December was "so far characterised by a continued difficult macroeconomic environment with low volatility and by the usual seasonal slowdown," Deutsche Bank said in a statement.

"Despite this environment, we have achieved solid operational results in October and November across all our core businesses," it said.

"However, our fourth-quarter results will include a number of one-off items," it cautioned, citing its cost-cutting programme and the cost of integrating its Postbank unit, as well as negative impacts from portfolio adjustments and writedowns.

"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 earnings in the fourth quarter," Deutsche Bank wrote.

The bank said it had also completed its plans to place 122 billion euros ($160 billion) worth of non-core assets into a separate "non-core operations unit or NCOU," which became operational in November.

Deutsche Bank also reiterated its goal to achieve a so-called Core Tier 1 ratio -- a gauge of its financial strength -- of "at least 8.0 percent by the end of the first quarter of 2013."

The profit warning hit Deutsche Bank shares, which were the biggest losers on the Frankfurt stock exchange, showing a loss of 2.74 percent in a stable to slightly softer market.