Ramping up plans to cut costs, sell businesses, restructure
LONDON (Reuters) - Some of Europe's biggest banks have said in the last six months they plan to cut more than 130,000 jobs as they ramp up plans to cut costs, sell businesses and restructure.
Earlier this month, Dutch lender Rabobank said it would cut 9,000 jobs, joining Deutsche Bank, UniCredit, Credit Suisse, HSBC and Standard Chartered to announce hefty job culls since June.
It marks an escalation in the scale of cuts. Eighteen of Europe's biggest banks cut 78,000 jobs in 2013 and 2014, according to data compiled by Reuters. That represented 4.1 percent of staff and was far less than cuts of 7.3 per cent in headcount across six major U.S. banks.
Here are plans announced by some of Europe's banks:
HSBC
Europe's biggest bank said in June it would cut 50,000 staff, including half from the sale of its businesses in Brazil and Turkey. That would account for almost a fifth of its 266,000 staff at the end of 2014, which was already down 59,000 from six years earlier.
Jobs will be cut by introducing more automation and consolidating IT and back office operations. HSBC said it would close 12 per cent of branches in its seven biggest markets. It said about 7,000-8,000 jobs would go in its home market of Britain, or one in six staff.
Deutsche Bank
New CEO John Cryan said in October the German bank would shed 35,000 staff, including 20,000 who would go due to business disposals, mostly from the spin-off of Postbank.
The remaining 15,000 job cuts will include 9,000 full-time employees and 6,000 external contractors.
Standard Chartered
New CEO Bill Winters said he will cut 15,000 staff, or 17 per cent of the workforce under a revival plan. The Asia-focused bank has already cut 4,000 jobs this year, reversing a decade-long era of expansion. The bank has said 1,000 of its most senior 4,000 staff have already been told they would go.
Rabobank
The Dutch co-operative bank this month said it would cut 9,000 staff, or about a fifth of its 47,000 workforce. That will come on top of 3,000 jobs it is cutting before the end of 2016.
UniCredit
The Italian bank said in November it would cut 18,200 jobs, or 14 per cent of its workforce.
The cuts would fall mainly in Italy, Germany, Austria and central and eastern Europe, and includes 6,000 jobs that will go due to sales of its business in Ukraine and a joint venture for its asset management arm.
Credit Suisse
New CEO Tidjane Thiam said he will cut jobs to help cut two billion Swiss francs in annual costs by the end of 2018, but he did not say how many of the bank's 45,800 staff would go.
Thiam said he expects to reduce the number of staff in Switzerland by 1,600 and will cut investment bank staff in London, where he estimated 1,800 staff could be in lower cost locations.
Barclays
With newly-installed CEO James Staley at the helm, Barclays is also expected to cut more jobs, and has started cutting more in the investment bank, mostly in Asia, sources said this month. One report said it could cut more than 3,000 more investment bank staff, on top of 7,000 cuts it is in the process of axing before the end of 2016.
That was part of previous CEO Antony Jenkins' May 2014 plan to axe 19,000 jobs, or 14 per cent of the workforce.
Royal Bank of Scotland
RBS, which is still 73 per cent owned by the UK government, will cut more jobs under plans announced in February to pull back from the United States and Asia and further shrink its investment bank. The Financial Times said the plan would see another 14,000 jobs go.
RBS had already cut it workforce from 200,000 staff in 2008 to 109,000 at the end of June.
Lloyds
The state-backed U.K. bank has cut more staff this year, part of its plan announced in October 2014 to cut 9,000 staff over the next three years, equivalent to 10 per cent of staff. Those cuts are on top of 30,000 jobs Lloyds has axed since its 2009/09 government bailout.
SocGen
The French bank is aiming to cut 2,000 jobs from its domestic retail network over the next five years, a union said in October. The bank said in September it planned to cut 420 staff in France.
ING
Dutch bank ING said in November 2014 it would cut 1,700 jobs by the end of 2017 from its 53,000 workforce.
ABN AMRO
ABN AMRO said last month, around the time it returned from full state ownership to the stock market, it would cut 650-1,000 jobs by the end of 2018, from its 22,000 workforce.
