Anglo Irish Bank to cut 230 jobs globally

Anglo Irish Bank says it wants to cut 230 jobs in the first phase of its redundancy programme. 110 people will go from the bank's Irish operations, while 95 will go in the UK and about 25 in the US and Europe.

This will bring the nationalised bank's total workforce to about 1,300 people. The bank says the sale of its Vienna based operations, natural attrition and the transfer of staff to NAMA will represent about half of the reduction.

The bank says the job cuts are due to the necessary restructuring and the transfer of about €28 billion of loans to the National Asset Management Agency over the coming months.

The redundancy programme will start on November 9 and will finish next February.

The terms of the programme were approved by the board of the bank after detailed talks with the Department of Finance.

Anglo Irish Bank's CEO Mike Aynsley has told staff that if there are insufficient numbers of staff opting for voluntary redundancy then the company would examine all options including a compulsory programme.

Anglo says that a second phase of redundancies will be similar in scale to the first and are likely to occur in 2010 and 2011.

Under the terms of the redundancy, staff in Ireland are being offered four weeks pay per year of services, plus the statutory entitlement, up to a maximum of 52 weeks pay. UK staff will be offered the same, while staff in the US will be offered two weeks of pay per year of services to a maximum of 52 weeks pay.

'This bank will undergo radical change in the coming months and today's announcement is the first phase of a programme intended to reduce to cost base of the operation and improve efficiency,' commented Mr Aynsley.

'Regrettably, we have to let people go as we reduce the size of the balance sheet and restructure the bank, he added.

He said that Anglo's mandate - as a nationalised bank - is to keep the public interest to the fore and this restructuring will reflect this objective.

Anglo said that the second phase of reductions will be similar in scale to the first. But it added that it will ensure that as many people as possible will move to any operations that are outsourced.

Anglo Irish Bank, badly hit by the financial crisis, was nationalised in January.