Holland’s biggest bank, ABN Amro is set to shed hundreds
of IT jobs in a bid to rationalise its organisation and improve
efficiency.
The move was announced as ABN Amro announced third quarter
results that showed a 5.6% fall in profits for the quarter at
£762m, compared with £802 in the same period last year.
The bank said it would cut staff by the equivalent of more than
500 full-time head office jobs, predominantly in the corporate IT
and risk areas. The cuts will be carried out through a combination
of outsourcing, off shoring and redundancies.
Rijkman Groenink, chairman of the bank’s management board, said,
"The first nine months of the year have been very much a period of
transition as we have focused on implementing and extracting the
benefits of the new group structure.
“It is imperative that we accelerate an improvement in our
performance to deliver ABN Amro’s targets by the end of 2008."
In September, ABN Amro signed one of largest outsourcing
agreements by a European bank, in a deal with five suppliers worth
a total of £1.23bn.
The deal, which was praised by analysts for its careful
preparation over two years, is expected to release savings of £176m
in 2007 and at least £410m a year in the following four years.