Fears for over 500 jobs at Ulster Bank
Issued : 11 January 2012
Over 500 staff may be affected by the rationalisation announcement at Ulster Bank tomorrow. The bank said this afternoon that it did not comment on speculation. "Announcements pertaining to jobs are made to staff directly," a spokesperson said.
Larry Broderick, of the IBOA, said there will be ''substantial losses'' announced tomorrow. He said it will have serious implications for frontline staff and that redundancies need to be done on a voluntary basis.
The bank currently employs 6,000 in total on both side of the borders. In 2009 it made 1,000 staff redundant.
Banks operating in Ireland have shed about 6,000 jobs since 2008, when the country's financial crisis hit, the Irish Bank Officials Association estimates.
RBS bought Ulster Bank in 2000 and expanded its Irish operations three years later through the acquisition of building society First Active. RBS lent aggressively during the country's property boom and has been saddled with big losses on the loans, including impairments of £1.1 billion in the first nine months of last year.
RBS will also announce tomorrow it is cutting up to 4,000 investment banking jobs as part of an overhaul of that business, a source has said previously.
UK expects RBS bank to pay lower bonuses
Majority UK state-owned Royal Bank of Scotland should be paying out lower bonuses after the sector's tough year, Britain's finance minister George Osborne said today.
"I am clear given the fact it's not been a particularly successful year for banking that we would expect to see bonuses lower this year than last year," Osborne told the UK parliament's treasury committee.
No cash bonus of more than £2,000 sterling was paid in the past two bonus rounds at RBS or Lloyds, another UK bank Britain bailed out and in which it now owns a 40% stake.
Osborne said he did not have the power to seize remuneration payments being paid at RBS in the current bonus round that stem from awards made two or three years ago.
John Hourican, who heads RBS's investment bank, could receive shares worth up to £4m this year based on long-term performance awards granted when he took the helm of the business in October 2008.
The Bank of England's financial policy committee has advised lenders to scale back bonuses to help beef up their capital buffers.
"That advice should be heeded. The Financial Services Authority is currently going bank by bank to see whether they are compliant with that warning," Osborne said.
UK taxpayers had to bail out RBS in the financial crisis and Britain now owns 83% of the bank. Osborne said he was very happy with the lender's new strategy to cut back on "capital hungry" activities.
