ABN Amro is cutting 1500 back office jobs worldwide and transferring 900 roles to low-cost locations, mainly India, under cost cutting measures designed to save the Dutch bank a further EUR150 million a year by 2008.
In a statement ABN Amro says the move will affect 2400 staff working in the bank's transaction processing, clearing and settlement operations in the Netherlands, the US, Brazil and the UK.
While the bank is planning to cut 2400 jobs, it says it will create 900 new posts in cheap countries such as India where it already has a wholly-owned back office operations subsidiary.
The bank says it is also exploring further opportunities for transferring jobs to other low cost countries such as Poland, Brazil and China.
Furthermore, ABN Amro says it is also planning to restructure its IT division, which in Europe "will primarily have consequences for the IT-related activities in the UK".
Under the IT restructuring, which is expected to generate savings of EUR70 million by 2008, ABN Amro will bring all sourcing programmes under one roof and will offshore its applications development operations to its centre in India. But the bank hasn't stated whether jobs would be lost under the IT restructuring.
ABN Amro says the cost of the latest restructuring in 2006 is estimated at EUR245 million, of which EUR125-150 million will be taken in the second quarter.
This latest cost cutting scheme is expected to save the bank EUR150 milllion as of 2008 and comes on top of earlier initiatives to cut EUR750 million in costs.