30/11/2001

Alliance & Leicester to shed 500 jobs

High street bank Alliance & Leicester has announced that it is to shed 500 jobs as part of a strategy to meet cost targets.

While it has been confirmed that jobs are to go at A&L’s head office in Leicester, it is still unclear just what other sites will be affected. Around 320 of the redundancies will be initiated on a voluntary basis, while cutting back on staff recruitment will make up the other 180 positions. It is not thought that any of the losses will take the form of compulsory redundancies.

Last October the company revealed that it was to cut 1,500 jobs over the following three years, but due to the increased uncertainty of the overall financial environment, those redundancies have now been brought forward.

Commenting on the decision, an official statement from the former building society described its approach to the current economic outlook in the UK as “cautious”.

“It is now very possible that the economic end market environment will be significantly weaker in 2002 and possibly 2003 than was generally thought in 2000,” the statement added, but assured that the bank was still on course to meet analysts’ profit figures for this year. (CL)

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