BNP Paribas to boost Lisbon hub with 45 job moves from Paris

PARIS (Reuters) - BNP Paribas (BNPP.PA) plans to move 45 internal finance jobs from Paris to Lisbon as banks facing growing workloads to deal with changes in regulations and accounting rules try and improve their efficiency.

The French lender confirmed the move on Tuesday, which was first announced by the Force Ouvriere (FO) union.

"Like all banks, we seek to address growing European regulatory constraints. In this context, the answer results in a readjustment between the Group Finance platforms in Paris and Lisbon", the bank said in an emailed statement.

BNP Paribas already has more than 1,800 employees in Portugal, according to a recent job advert posted on its website through which it was recruiting for its Group Finance Service hub in Lisbon. That unit is responsible for compiling and processing accounting and financial information.

The bank said all Paris employees affected by the changes, because they worked in the same area covering finance, accounting and stress-testing, would be placed in equivalent positions in the region.

Out of the 45 jobs, BNP will take back control of 13 roles that are currently undertaken externally before moving them to Lisbon, while nine positions would be newly created, FO said.

Unions called it a second wave of job transfers after BNP set up a 'European Finance Operations Center' in Lisbon in 2015 employing about 200 people. Hourly labor costs in Portugal were 13.7 euros in 2016, compared with 35.6 euros in France, according to Eurostat data.

(Reporting by Maya Nikolaeva; Editing by Sarah White, Greg Mahlich)