More RBS Jobs Go

Bad news today from the Royal Bank of Scotland. The bank announced that it plans to cut 2,300 jobs. This accounts for roughly 2% of their 106,000 strong workforce in the UK. The cuts are expected to hit sectors like back office processing.

Taxpayers currently have a 70% stake in the company after the government bailout last year. The bank already cut 10,000 jobs last year in their investment banking sectors. They are now turning toward the retail side to further cut costs.

The current string of cuts will be spread across the country. This is due to the general fall in business from the recession. It is expected that the next report from the RBS will declare £28bn in losses for 2008. This record loss is the largest since known corporate history.

Nearly 170,000 people work for the bank. Until this point the cuts at RBS were restricted to the global banking and markets sector, which was affected by their 2007 partial takeover of the Dutch bank, ABN Amro.

All of this news comes as the new CEO, Stephen Hester, prepares to report for the Treasury Select Committee. It is expected that they will question whether bonuses should be paid to the bank's staff. The news also comes on the heels of Barclays announcement that 4,000 jobs would be cut from their retail bank. It is also expected that Lloyds, the current owner of HBOS, will announce serious cuts as they merge the two banks.

RBS states that this will have no impact on their customer facing branch staff. They have also already reached an agreement with union officials to do everything possible to limit redundancies.

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