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Italy's UniCredit to shed 18,200 jobs by 2018

AFP/The Local
AFP/The Local - [email protected]
Italy's UniCredit to shed 18,200 jobs by 2018
Unicredit will cut 18,200 jobs by 2018. Gaetano Virgalitto/AFP

UniCredit, Italy's second-largest lender by market value, said it will cut 18,200 jobs by 2018 in a bid to save €1.6 billion.

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Some 6,000 posts would go as UniCredit sells off a bank in Ukraine and a joint venture between its Pioneer unit and Santander, while the rest would be achieved through cuts in Italy, Germany and Austria, leaving the bank with 111,000 employees in 2018.

The restructuring plan also includes exiting poorly performing businesses such as retail banking in Austria and leasing in Italy, the company said in a statement on Wednesday.

The cuts also involve further reducing the number of bank branches in Italy, Germany and Austria, closing 800 by 2018.

At the same time, the group will strengthen its investment in digital banking, with €1.2 billion earmarked between 2016 and 2016.

“We aim at these goals in a persistently tough macroeconomic environment, marked by historically low interest rates and decelerating worldwide economic growth,” the company's CEO Federico Ghizzoni said in the statement.

“The plan is rigorous and at the same time ambitious.”

UniCredit returned to profit last year after hemorrhaging €14 billion in 2013 as it wrote down many of its assets ahead of "stress tests" carried out by the European Central Bank on the heels of the eurozone financial crisis.

 

 

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