ANZ to cut Jobs in 2012
ANZ to cut Jobs in 2012 – ANZ Banking Group has launched its first round of job cuts amid fears that up to 5,000 jobs could disappear from Australia’s big banks in two years.
Analysts believe most of the industry-wide cuts will result from natural attrition rather than redundancies.
But ANZ will be the exception, slashing about 1,000 jobs over the next six months as a quick fix, designed to relieve pressure from analysts and investors about the bank’s burgeoning cost base.
ANZ on Tuesday told 130 staff that their jobs will be axed.
The Victorian back office roles to go span ANZ’s retail, business banking and SME operations, a spokesman said.
ANZ will cut a maximum two per cent of its 49,000-strong workforce, giving it a three per cent lift in earnings per share (EPS), Bell Potter Securities analyst TS Lim said.
“The Australian retail and business operations are already pretty efficient, so there’s no way you’re going to have massive (job) reductions there,” he said.
He expects ANZ to cut around 350 jobs from its Institutional Banking division, and another 340 jobs from its group corporate centre, both of which employ mostly non-union executives.
Mr Lim’s comments came after UBS said up to 7,000 jobs could be cut from the big four’s 179,000-strong workforce.
Recent redundancies at Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and Royal Bank of Scotland point to subdued activity within capital markets, Fat Prophets analyst Greg Fraser said.
“You’d expect that to be echoed across retail banks.”
In a commentary on banks’ costs repeated from a UBS report in June, banking analyst Jonathan Mott said he expects the combined headcount to fall to 172,000 in two years.
ANZ’s move will give chief executive Mike Smith relief from investors worried at the bank’s surging costs racked up from its expansion in Asia and markets trading business.
Tags: Anz Bank, Job Losses
Posted in Money
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