Staff Face Anxious Wait On Job Loss Front

Staff at Royal Bank of Scotland's corporate and investment banking unit (which now includes thousands of former ABN AMRO staff) have been warned that job losses are likely to come over the next 2 years, and that current market conditions will likely result in more casualties.

The Financial Times reported Monday that 7,000 jobs (or 25% of the total) are likely to be lost when RBS finally merges its wholesale banking operations with ABN. The bank issued a statement Monday which acknowledged that 'since the acquisition of ABN AMRO, we have consistently said that as we brought our wholesale banking businesses together there would be job losses over the course of the next 2 years. In the light of current conditions in some parts of the global credit markets (however), we are also looking at the appropriate size for our businesses affected by this downturn'. The bank also said last week that it will eliminate 'notably more' corporate banking jobs because of the market slowdown too.

The Daily Telegraph reports that RBS has 'insisted' that, when push comes to shove, it will not favour its own employees over ABN staff. Wags suggest that, although there will clearly be no favouritism, Amsterdam will be cleared out first, whilst anyone with any link to anything Scottish will be safe. And Reuters reports that, by pure co-incidence, a number of senior ABN AMRO fixed income executives have now left the enlarged unit, including the global head of debt capital markets origination, the global head of leveraged finance, the head of loan syndication, sales and trading and the head of bond syndicate. Interestingly, none of these staff are thought to have been Scottish.