Lloyds To Axe 1000 Jobs In Latest Bank Cull

Lloyds Banking Group (Other OTC: LLOBF - news) will unveil plans to cut another 1000 jobs on Thursday in the latest phase of the state-backed lender's restructuring.

Sky News has learnt that Lloyds will make an announcement about the job losses, which will be spread across its operations - including in its branch network.

The roughly 1000 cuts will form part of an overall target of 9000, announced just over a year ago as the precursor to a new three-year strategy aimed at reflecting the increasingly digital consumption of banking services.

Prior to Thursday's announcement, 2360 of the 9000 job reductions targeted by the end of 2017 have so far been lost.

Some of those affected this week will be redeployed elsewhere within Lloyds, reducing the number of people made redundant well below 1000, sources said.

The timing of the jobs announcement may be seen as awkward for George Osborne, the Chancellor, whose Autumn Statement reiterated on Wednesday the Government's plans to offer billions of pounds of discounted Lloyds shares to ordinary investors next year.

The latest wave of cuts may also take to somewhere in the region of 50,000 the total number of jobs shed by Lloyds since it rescued HBOS, the stricken mortgage lender, during the 2008 financial crisis.

An official inquiry into HBOS's failure last week laid the blame at the door of the bank's management and board, with regulators leaving open the option of future regulatory sanctions against those deemed culpable.

Under Antonio Horta-Osorio, Lloyds' chief executive, the combined bank has gradually returned to health, with taxpayers making a slim profit on a succession of share sales.

The Government initially held a 43% stake in Lloyds but has reduced that to just under 10%, generating £16bn in proceeds, against the original £20.5bn capital injection.

That return has come despite the bank having to set aside almost £14bn for the mis-selling of payment protection insurance - by far the largest sum of any UK lender.

Lloyds said a year ago that it would lose a further 9000 jobs and close 200 branches - while opening 50 more - while it invested in remote advice services for customers, who would be increasingly expected to use online banking or self-service facilities within branches instead of dealing with staff face-to-face.

More than 10m Lloyds customers currently bank online while more than 5m use its mobile banking services.

Research by the British Bankers' Association showed that UK-based customers conducted almost 40m mobile and internet banking transactions each week in 2013, a huge increase on the previous year.

Lloyds' closures will mainly affect urban areas where there are already high concentrations of its outlets.

Announcing the new three-year strategy in 2014, Mr Horta-Osorio said:

"Over the last three years the successful delivery of our strategy has ensured that we have become a safe, highly efficient, UK-focused retail and commercial bank.

"The next phase of our strategy will use these strong foundations as a basis for meeting the rapidly-changing needs of our customers, and sets out how we will grow the business in a way that will deliver increasing and sustainable returns for our shareholders."

Lloyds declined to comment on Thursday's job cuts announcement.