Banks worldwide have announced major job cuts this year. Globally, 75,700 jobs are reportedly being eliminated, with the most recent announcement coming from Italy’s largest bank. Unicredit has become the latest major bank to unveil layoff plans, joining Deutsche Bank, Santander, Commerzbank, HSBC, and more. The negative interest rate environment and slowing economies have forced banks to cut costs and lay off employees.
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Unicredit Eliminating 8000 Jobs
Italy’s largest bank, Unicredit, unveiled its new business plan to 2023 on Tuesday, which reportedly includes laying off 8,000 employees and closing 500 branches. CEO Jean Pierre Mustier claims that this round of job cuts will help eliminate 1 billion euros ($1.11 billion) of the bank’s gross expenses.
Unicredit also announced a separate buyback of 2 billion euros ($2.2 billion), Bloomberg detailed, noting that the job cuts equal to more than 9% of the bank’s workforce. The bank, however, said it intends to spend 9.4 billion euros on information technology and human resources over the next four years to update its technology and improve compliance.
The bank currently has 12,000 branches in over 50 countries and 30 representative offices around the world, according to its website. It provides products and services to approximately 26 million customers in areas of corporate investment banking, commercial banking and wealth management. Its 14 core markets are Italy, Germany, Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Turkey.
Two Italian banking unions told Reuters on Tuesday that they expect the actual number of job cuts to be around 5,500 instead of the 8,000 announced. They also expect 450 branches to close instead of the planned 500 branches.
