Peter Löscher, the new chief executive of Siemens, is preparing a series of aggressive earnings targets for senior managers, along with thousands of job cuts, in an effort to introduce a US-style "can-do" culture at Europe's biggest engineering group.

Under the plans, he will tie the pay of top executives more closely to their performance in achieving the targets, which will be aligned with those of Siemens' main competitors, such as General Electric (GE) and Swiss-Swedish group ABB.

Behind the project is a bid by Mr Löscher to narrow a big profitability gap between Siemens and some of its rivals, chiefly GE.

Mr Löscher, who has just completed 100 days in office, is concerned that while Siemens has world-class technologies it is the margin leader in none of its 10 operating businesses.

In the first nine months of this year, the operating margin for its industrial businesses was 8.5 per cent, against 14.7 per cent for the equivalent activities at GE.

Julian Mitchell, analyst at Credit Suisse, said: "Mr Löscher has a great opportunity to take Siemens in a new direction. The external conditions, including a new and supportive chairman and a strong environment for orders, are mostly in his favour."

Among Mr Löscher's plans are the cutting of many middle-management jobs from the workforce of more than 400,000.

While he is not yet ready to say how many jobs will go, some analysts think the cull could be up to 10,000 in the next few years, mostly outside Germany.

Mr Löscher was appointed in May after a bribery scandal claimed the jobs of the previous chief executive and the super-visory board chairman.