Barclays Bank is to cut 400 IT jobs, including 150
in-house IT jobs and 250 contractors from its Global Infrastructure
Delivery Unit.
The company said some jobs had become obsolete and others were
duplications. Most of the job cuts planned are in Cheshire and
London.
The bank said it is attempting to reduce compulsory redundancies
through releasing contractors, closing vacancies and opening
voluntary redundancy registers.
"Barclays continually reviews its operations and resources so
that it functions as efficiently as possible as business needs and
customer requirements evolve," said a statement. "As part of this
process, we have identified some aspects of our technology
operations where the organisational structure impedes performance,
and roles and responsibilities for colleagues are unclear. In some
cases, roles are obsolete or being duplicated elsewhere within the
bank."
Other banks have been
reducing staff numbers to position themselves for tough
business conditions and IT jobs have been hard hit.
HSBC cut 1,100 jobs in its investment banking division in
September including 500 front and back-office jobs in London.
Credit Suisse, which made a loss in the third quarter of this
year of £704m, has announced 650 job cuts including IT support
functions.
Citigroup plans to cut its global workforce by 52,000 jobs
across all businesses and geographies in the near future. Citigroup
CEO Vikram Pandit revealed last month that the bank would cut 20%
of its employees at the group.
The
Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) is expected to make thousands of job
cuts as it comes to terms with the economic slowdown. According
to reports last month, up to 3,000 jobs will be cut in the bank's
global banking and markets divisions.
Barclays is also expected to cut IT jobs at its FirstPlus loans
business as it closes to new business. It will keep its IT
infrastructure to process existing customer loans, but is scaling
it back.
Charles Black, CEO of hosted desktop provider Nasstar has
said,"For too long CIOs have adopted the 'open wallet' approach to
IT spend, running up bills on expensive software and server
replacements. That also means manpower and that is a very
resource-hungry way to enjoy the benefits of IT."