RBS announces 2,600 UK job losses
by Gill Montia
Story link: RBS announces 2,600 UK job losses
Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has announced that it will be cutting a further 2,600 jobs in the UK in the next year.
The bank’s insurance division, which includes Direct Line and Churchill, will suffer the worst of the cull in preparation for an eventual sale.
Around 600 posts will go at the group’s Edinburgh and London offices.
The 84% state-owned bank has so far cut jobs by almost 23,000 worldwide and says it will continue to keep compulsory redundancies to a minimum.
An RBS spokesman said: “We are working hard to rebuild RBS in order to repay taxpayers for their support and having to cut jobs is the most difficult part of this process.”
Last week, the bank reported operating profit of £713 million for the first quarter of 2010, compared with an operating loss of £1.35 billion in the final three months of last year.
Group chief executive, Stephen Hester, said he was confident that the business remained on track in the delivery of its five-year restructuring plan, having begun 2010 much as expected.
