Northern Rock Announces Job Cuts

by Peter Wakeford
Posted by Hannah on 29 August 2008
Northern Rock Announces Job Cuts

The bank remains on track to reduce its workforce by a third over the next few years.

Around 1,300 workers for Northern Rock have been made redundant, the nationalised lender said today.

According to the mortgage lender, which was taken over by the government after almost collapsing with the beginning of the credit crunch last summer, 500 of these job losses were voluntary. Two offices formerly belonging to Northern Rock near its Newcastle headquarters will now also be sold due to this shrinking of the workforce, the BBC reports.

The bank has said that it wishes to reduce its overall staff numbers from 6,000 to 4,000 by 2011.

Commenting on the redundancies, Northern Rock executive chairman Ron Sandler said: "The consultation process has been a substantial exercise and it has been undertaken carefully and thoroughly. We must now look to the future, deliver our plan and return this business back to health and profitability in the coming years."

The bank run on Northern Rock last year, which saw queues of worried customers looking to withdraw their savings besiege branches of the bank, was caused by the firm suffering from a severe revenue drought due to the credit crunch.

This is largely because the firm's own business model led to it relying on the wholesale money markets, on which banks lend money to each other, for funding, rather than customer deposits.

Therefore, when these markets froze with the crunch, Northern Rock was left suspected of being unable to meet its running costs - causing near-panic among savers.

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