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* To publish results Sunday, April 26. Poll:
* To unveil restructuring details on April 27 at 0600 GMT
* Selling Postbank seen tough without booking a loss
* Deutsche has "no easy levers to pull" -analyst
By Thomas Atkins
FRANKFURT, April 25 (Reuters) - If running a global bank iscomplicated, cutting one back is even more difficult.
Deutsche Bank faces a long and costly battle,analysts say, to sell Postbank and pare investmentbanking, the new strategic goals it outlined late on Friday.
While the bank is due to publish results on Sunday,investors will get no details on its overhaul before Monday at anews conference. The scope of the challenge is already clear,however.
Germany's flagship lender comes late to restructuring afterEuropean rivals such as Barclays and Credit Suisse already slashed their global franchises years ago,cutting jobs and hiving off businesses.
Deutsche will face an especially difficult challenge inselling off Postbank without having to post losses.
Deutsche aims to cut its stake to below 50 percent next yearfrom 94 percent by selling shares on the stock market and thento reduce its holding to zero in the medium term, a source closeto the matter said on Saturday.
But a battle is already building over the conditions for asale as the government signals that big layoffs at Postbankshould be banned from any deal.
"We're worried about jobs at Postbank," Carsten Schneider,finance expert and deputy SPD parliamentary floor leader, toldReuters.
"The policy goal is that it won't be levelled following asale to an investor. Deutsche Bank has a social-politicalresponsibility here that extends beyond its economic interests."
Postbank could fetch close to 3.6 billion euros ($3.9billion) if it sells for a multiple of 0.8 times a book value of4.5 billion euros, according to analysts' calculations. Thatpoints to hefty losses unless the bank can find a strategicbuyer willing to pay a premium.
Deutsche Bank had spent around 6 billion euros ($6.5billion) to purchase Postbank in stages starting in 2008.
Postbank serves 14 million clients from 1,100 branchesintegrated into the postal system. Deutsche's own brand servessome 8.5 million retail clients through some 730 branches.
"With unions seeking a 5 percent wage increase and jobsecurity, it's not obvious Deutsche Bank has easy levers to pullfast," analyst Huw van Steenis at Morgan Stanley wrote in arecent note.
The group may go further than just selling Postbank toreduce its activities in retail, a low-profit battlefield inGermany dominated by highly competitive savings and cooperativebanks.
"We're also looking at them to reduce the scope of theirEuropean retail operations, preferably to zero, and to trim backthe residual German retail operations," said Omar Fall, equityanalyst at investment bank Jefferies.
Deutsche Bank runs retail banking operations in half a dozencountries including Italy, Spain and Poland, with some 830branches and 5 million customers altogether.
The division contributed 753 million euros to the group'spretax profit in 2014, according to a JP Morgan report. Citibankcalculates that Deutsche could sell the division for little morethan 2.8 billion euros.
THE HARDER THEY FALL
Nor will it be easy to trim 150 billion to 200 billion eurosin assets, a sum expected by analysts, from its investment bank.Such a move would strengthen the ratio of its capital to itsassets, which is a measure of financial stability that isincreasingly important to regulators.
The bank has already pared business lines such as makingmarkets in U.S. commercial paper and in single-name creditdefault swaps to get rid of balance sheet burdens. Exiting otherareas such as long-term repurchase agreements and interest rateswaps could be costly if the bank sells its positions at a loss.
"It's going to be decisive how much investment banking itcuts and which markets it withdraws from," said analyst DirkBecker at brokerage Kepler.
Deutsche needs to pull out of prime brokerage and any highvolume business where margins are thin and capital requirementsare high, he said.
"In investment banking, the bank needs to get out ofanywhere it's not earning money," he said. (Additional reporting by Kathrin Jones, Matthias Sobolewski,Markus Wacket and Andreas Kroener; editing by Jane Baird)
