More jobs gloom for Scottish financial sector

As a percentage (8%), the number of jobs likely to be lost in Scotland's financial centre over the next couple of years doesn't look too daunting. But the actual number, 24,000, looks very scary indeed.

Following RBS's gargantuan 9,000 redundancies announced last week, and speculation that the merger between HBOS and Lloyds TSB could eventually see 10,000 jobs lost in Scotland, the latest projections by DTZ, for Scottish Enterprise, don't look too unlikely.

The study suggests 20,000 jobs could be lost within the banking and insurance industry north of the border this year alone, with another 4,000 potential redundancies in the industry by 2010.

Professor Gabriel Talmain, director of the Centre for Economic and Financial Studies at Glasgow University, said: "The financial sector was one of the mainstays of the Scottish economy, so if jobs go there then it means that more jobs will go elsewhere; it means that property prices are likely to be hit and the services and hospitality industry will be hit hard."

Scottish Enterprise was keen to point to the fact that the industry has grown rapidly over the last ten years - swelling by 96% since 1998.