ING Groep NV will move as many as 60 trading jobs from Amsterdam and Brussels to London as the biggest Dutch lender seeks to consolidate operations and cut costs, a person with knowledge of the plans said.
The company also plans to shut its equity derivatives business for financial institutions in New York, Singapore and Brussels, said the person, who declined to be identified as the plans were confidential.
ING is the first large European lender shifting staff to London after the UK decided to leave the EU in a June referendum. Other banks have signaled they might have to move jobs and operations abroad, with UBS Group AG chief executive officer Sergio Ermotti saying last month the Swiss lender might have to shift as many as 1,500 positions elsewhere.
While the future of London as a financial capital is in question after Brexit, the city remains home to a large pool of potential talent. ING might have to review the location in the future if the impact of Brexit is so severe as to affect its ability to draw employees or otherwise impacts the business and its clients, the person said.
ING plans to eliminate about 5,800 jobs in Belgium and the Netherlands to help speed up its digital transformation, the Amsterdam-based bank said on Monday last week. Those measures are expected to save about 900 million euros (US$989 million) a year.
Separately, Lloyds Banking Group PLC, Britain’s largest mortgage lender, is expected to eliminate about 1,340 jobs as part of a cost-cutting program that started in October 2014.
The move is part of a plan to pare about 12,000 roles by next year, the Accord labor union, which represents employees, said in a statement on Wednesday.
The job losses are within retail banking, operations, finance and risk, and customer products and marketing, and bring the cuts to about 8,680 so far. The lender, which employs about 74,117 in total, said it would create 110 new roles and seek to move some people to other positions.
“Where it is necessary for employees to leave the company, it will look to achieve this by offering voluntary redundancy,” Lloyds said in a statement. “Compulsory redundancies will always be a last resort.”
Chief executive officer Antonio Horta-Osorio deepened job cuts in July as he strives to offset evaporating income from lending amid record-low interest rates in the wake of the UK’s Brexit vote.
“We’re deeply concerned that both the scale and the pace of job reductions are increasing,” Accord general secretary Ged Nichols said in the statement. “This ‘death by a thousand cuts’ approach does nothing to give confidence to those who will be staying with the business.”
Meanwhile, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro SpA, the Italian unit of BNP Paribas SA, plans to eliminate 680 jobs and close 100 branches by 2020 as it expands its online and mobile services, people with knowledge of the discussions said.
The job cuts are to be carried out through early retirements, the people said.
The Rome-based lender has started talks with unions, they said.
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