Spanish Bank Sabadell To Cut 1,800 Jobs: Union

Spain's fifth-largest bank, Banco Sabadell, plans to cut 1,800 jobs, or nearly 11 percent of its workforce in the country, Spanish union CCOO said Tuesday

Madrid, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 10th Nov, 2020 ):Spain's fifth-largest bank, Banco Sabadell, plans to cut 1,800 jobs, or nearly 11 percent of its workforce in the country, Spanish union CCOO said Tuesday.

The directors of the lender proposed the figure during talks with the union over planned job cuts, Spain's largest union said in a statement.

The bank, which had just under 16,900 employees at the end of September, announced in October that it would put in place a cost-cutting plan by the end of the year that would involve job cuts, mainly through voluntary redundancies and early retirement.

The job reductions are part of a wave of restructuring in the Spanish banking sector since the 2008 global financial crisis, according to the CCOO, which added that the coronavirus pandemic played only a marginal role.

Between 2008 and the end of 2019 Spanish banks slashed nearly 100,000 jobs, or around 37 percent of their workforce in 2008, said Joan Sierra who is in charge of the banking sector at the union.

"Covid could influence a bit, due to the poor perspectives caused by the pandemic, for example by the rise in the risk that loans won't be paid back," he added.

During the first nine months of 2020 Sabadell saw its net profit plunge by 74 percent to 203 million euros ($240 million) as it increased provisions for bad loans, as most other European banks have done.

Spain's largest bank, Santander, is expected to announce this week how many people will be affected there by a new round of job cuts, with Spanish media reporting the lender could slash 3,000 jobs.