"With a little support from the markets it will be more like two years, but if markets remain as sluggish as they are, we might be talking about three years," the paper quoted him as saying in a joint interview with co-head Marcus Schenck on Wednesday.

Germany's largest lender has been trying to regain its footing after a series of scandals, lawsuits and bets that went wrong pushed it to the brink of collapse last year.

The group said earlier this year it would combine its markets, corporate finance and global transaction banking divisions into a single corporate and investment bank (CIB) as part of a broader restructuring.

Schenck told Handelsblatt that he had not heard from any shareholder who had fundamental doubts about the lender's strategy.

"Our job is not to maximize earnings for one or two quarters. If that's what we wanted we would just need to throw a few switches and we could report higher profits," Schenck said.

(Reporting by Maria Sheahan, editing by Louise Heavens)