Dutch banking group ABN Amro said today that it would shed 2,850 jobs worldwide under a plan to speed up cost cutting to save €770m from 2007.
A third of the job losses would occur in the Netherlands, but would not involve obligatory redundancy. Many of the bank's activities would be sub contracted.
ABN Amro employs 160 at its Irish operations in Dublin's IFSC. Speaking from London, a spokesman for the company said there would be little or no impact on staff numbers here after today's announcement.
The bank said that it would book a one-off net charge of €530m in its accounts for this year to pay for the cost of shedding staff.
The bank said it was standing by a forecast that profits for 2004, excluding exceptional gains, would rise by at least 10% from the figure for 2003.
The bank said that jobs would be shed mainly in the areas of human resource management, information technology and at the investment banking branch, ABN Amro (Wholesale Clients), which would be reorganised.
