Lloyds cuts 2,100 jobs as staff enter permanent state of anxiety

by Gill Montia

Story link: Lloyds cuts 2,100 jobs as staff enter permanent state of anxiety

Lloyds Banking Group has announced a further 2,100 job cuts.

The cull will be carried out over the next three years and will be moderated by the creation of 350 new posts.

The 43% state-owned group has revealed plans to reduced staff numbers by 7,000 since the beginning of the year, as the struggle to complete its hastily agreed merger with HBOS continues.

Speaking to the BBC, Unite trade union spokesman, Rob MacGregor, described staff as in a permanent state of anxiety as job losses mount on an almost weekly basis.

The group announced the closure of its Cheltenham & Gloucester branches on 9th June, putting 1,500 jobs at risk, just a few days after revealing plans to cut 530 staff by closing a Halifax processing centre in Kent and axing 30 posts in both London and Birmingham.

The operations overlap between Lloyds and its merger partner is immense, leading to predictions of up to 30,000 job losses when the deal was agreed last autumn.

As an added pressure, the group’s balance sheet has had to accommodate the £10.8 billion loss posted by HBOS for 2008 and is now gearing up for a sharp increase in writedowns on bad debt during 2009.

Falling commercial property prices alone have led the group to predict that HBOS’s corporate impairments will be 50% higher in 2009 than in 2008.