Australia and New Zealand Banking Group is set to cut hundreds of jobs, the Finance Sector Union said Friday, the latest large bank to seek to reduce costs at its Australian operations. “ANZ said that due to the difficult environment particularly relating to funding costs and revenue generation, they'll need to go through an aggressive cost reduction process,” FSU National Secretary Leon Carter told Deal Journal Australia. He added that while the bank suggested there was no firm number, it made clear at the briefing that a significant number of jobs would disappear. “This will definitely be in the several hundreds,” Carter said. A spokesperson for ANZ confirmed that the head of its Australian division Philip Chronican held a meeting with the FSU Thursday at which he said cost pressures are building and this would have an impact on jobs. “As things firm up, numbers will be advised to both the union and to staff,” the spokesperson said, adding that ANZ has a record of being able to redeploy internally 80% of staff that want to stay. The restructuring at ANZ, Australia's third-largest listed bank by market value, comes in the wake of similar moves by Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank and Royal Bank of Scotland to cut jobs locally. At least five employees of Deutsche Bank's institutional client group and less than 10 from Morgan Stanley's institutional equities division in Australia were cut Monday, part of a wider restructuring taking place at the banks globally.
