AIB to close corporate offices

ALLIED IRISH Banks is closing four corporate banking offices within the bank’s capital markets division with the potential loss…

ALLIED IRISH Banks is closing four corporate banking offices within the bank’s capital markets division with the potential loss of 26 jobs.

The division is closing corporate banking businesses in Leeds and Edinburgh in Britain, Houston in the US and in Sydney, marking the bank’s withdrawal from Australia.

The highest job losses will come in the Sydney office where the bank employs 16 staff. It has has four staff in Leeds and three each in Edinburgh and Houston.

The decision to close the offices was taken after a strategic review “in light of the global economic climate”.

READ MORE

AIB will retain its corporate banking offices in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Frankfurt, Paris, New York, Los Angeles and Toronto. AIB said that, where possible, staff facing redundancy would be offered alternative jobs, while some of the staff in Sydney were Irish and may return to the bank’s operations in Ireland.

Staff numbers in the capital markets division fell to 2,424 at the end of 2009, down from 2,562 a year earlier, while overall AIB staff numbers fell by 1,134 to 24,681.

Colm Doherty, AIB’s managing director, has told staff that the bank would have to take “tough decisions” to cut costs further but would not announce any job cuts before the European Commission rules on the bank’s viability plan.

Brussels is expected to rule on Bank of Ireland’s restructuring plans over the coming weeks.

AIB is planning to sell its UK banking business, its 24 per cent share of US bank MT and its 70 per cent stake in Polish lender Bank Zachodni WBK to try to raise some of the €7.4 billion required to boost the bank’s capital levels.