In a move that will eliminate about 230 jobs, Deutsche Bank will shut down its transaction-processing operation in Baltimore County either late this year or early next year, and will shift that work to an outside vendor, local Deutsche Bank officials said yesterday.

The cuts will leave the former Alex. Brown & Sons - founded in Baltimore in 1808 - with about 900 workers in the region. When it was acquired by Bankers Trust Corp. in September 1997, about 1,500 of its 2,700 employees worked in the area.

"This obviously is, for us, a difficult decision because of the human aspect of it," said David M. DiPietro, a managing director who heads the locally based Deutsche Bank Alex. Brown Private Client Division and is one of the bank's top local executives.

The decision affects workers at the Atrium building on West Padonia Road in Timonium, where the bulk of the employees work, and at a smaller location in Hunt Valley. Although originally part of Alex. Brown & Sons, the processing centers and the employees who work in them are part of Deutsche Bank's Global Technology Operations unit.

Deutsche Bank, Germany's largest banking company, has hired Pershing, a division of Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette that specializes in transaction processing, to take over the work. Pershing, which DiPietro said does processing work for a number of companies, has been in the transaction-processing business since 1934.

Deutsche Bank is in the midst of deep cost-cutting that includes announced plans to cut 9,200 jobs among its worldwide work force of 97,000.

With the local job cuts, the bank is following the lead of many U.S. companies that have outsourced such tasks as technology support, maintenance and accounting. Those tasks are important because they support the company's main business but are not its core strength, do not generate revenue and usually account for a major expense.

DiPietro said transaction processing fits that bill. In the late 1980s, Alex. Brown tried to make it a revenue generator by contracting to do processing work for smaller brokerage firms. But that business has remained fairly small, meaning it defrayed some of the operation's overall costs but didn't turn a profit.

In the meantime, transaction processing has come to require intensive use of technology, with the hardware and software needed to keep pace with rivals growing in sophistication and price, bank executives said.

After a recent review, the company realized it couldn't afford the investments needed to sustain its processing venture, especially because the money being spent on it was holding back other of the bank's needs locally.

Ultimately, the bank decided the processing operation should be closed.

Once the shutdown is complete, Deutsche Bank will reap an average annual savings in the tens of millions of dollars, those familiar with the situation said. The bank declined to discuss the payroll savings or to quantify what the workers were paid.

Of the 230 who will lose their jobs, 170 are below the level of assistant vice president and are chiefly in operational and technology-support jobs. A number of managers are affected, as is one managing director, DiPietro said.

Because the unit must remain in operation until Pershing can fully take over, the company is devising a compensation and separation package that rewards workers who remain until the end. The company would not provide details of the packages.

The decision to contract out transaction processing is the latest in a string of moves that have all but eliminated the presence of the former Alex. Brown & Sons in Baltimore, its hometown.

Alex. Brown was bought by Bankers Trust in 1997, and Bankers Trust was taken over by Deutsche Bank in 1999.