Yahoo Finance RBS To Unveil 2,000 Investment Bank Job Cuts
Royal Bank of Scotland (LSE: RBS.L - news) (RBS) will cut up to 2,000 jobs in its investment bank, just a day after its chief executive stunned the City by announcing his departure.
I have learnt that the taxpayer-backed lender will inform staff in its markets division that the roles will be axed as part of its ongoing restructuring, taking to nearly 40,000 the number of jobs that RBS has slashed since it was bailed out by taxpayers.
Details of the job cuts were still being finalised on Wednesday night and the exact number of redundancies could yet vary.
A decision to axe 2,000 jobs in its investment banking arm would reduce the division's headcount by just under 20%, broadly in line with the shrinkage in the risk-weighted assets which it holds.
Some of the cuts will fall at RBS's markets operations in the City although many will take place in Asia and its other international operations.
RBS's markets business employs just over 11,000 people, a fraction of the number it employed when the bank was a powerhouse across the global investment banking sector.
The latest round of reductions will mean that only around 9,000 will continue to work there.
The acquisition in 2007 of ABN Amro, the Dutch bank, under Fred Goodwin added tens of thousands of staff to RBS's markets unit as it competed with the likes of Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS-PB - news) and JP Morgan (Other OTC: JPXSZ - news) for business in the world's major financial centres.
George Osborne, the Chancellor, has effectively forced RBS to reduce the size of its investment banking arm and refocus its lending activity on the UK.
RBS is expected to make a statement about the cuts on Thursday although it may not disclose the precise number of roles affected by the restructuring, insiders said.
The headcount reduction will underline the fact that the reshaping of RBS is still a work in progress, nearly five years after it was bailed out with £45.5bn of taxpayers' money.
The continuing efforts to restore the bank to health will be completed without Stephen Hester, RBS's chief executive, who announced on Wednesday that he was to step down before the end of the year.
Last month, RBS announced that it was cutting a further 1,400 jobs at its retail banking head office, adding to more than 35,000 redundancies already unveiled since the banking crisis.
RBS declined to comment on the impending job cuts.
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