RBS set to cut jobs at Irish unit - source
Issued : 11 January 2012
Reuters
Royal Bank of Scotland is set to cut more jobs at its troubled Irish business Ulster Bank to save costs, a person familiar with the matter said.
The person would not comment on how many jobs were set to be cut, but said an announcement was likely on Thursday.
It would be the second round of job cuts since the financial crisis at Dublin-based Ulster, where 1,000 jobs went in 2009. It had 4,400 staff at the end of 2010.
Local banks and foreign lenders servicing the domestic Irish economy have shed 6,000 jobs since 2008, when the country's financial crisis hit, the Irish Bank Officials Association estimates.
RBS bought Ulster in 2000 and expanded its Irish operations three years later through the acquisition of building society First Active. RBS lent aggressively during Ireland's ill-fated property boom and has been saddled with big losses on the loans, including impairments of 1.1 billion pounds in the first nine months of last year.
RBS, 83 percent owned by the British government, will also on Thursday announce it is cutting up to 4,000 investment banking jobs as part of an overhaul of that business, a source has said previously.
The review of its global banking and markets (GBM) division will see RBS say it plans to sell or shut some businesses, such as cash equities and other parts of the Hoare Govett corporate broking business. Some parts of GBM will be merged with its payments business Global Transaction Services (GTS).
(Reporting by Steve Slater in London and Carmel Crimmins in Dublin; Editing by Douwe Miedema and Erica Billingham)
