Peter Löscher, new chief executive of Siemens, is preparing 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 link more closely the pay of top executives to their performance in achieving the targets, which will be aligned with those of Siemens' main competitors such as General Electric of the US and ABB, the Swiss-Swedish group.