Scots feel pain in latest round of cuts

Lloyds TSB's decision to cut 625 jobs in its corporate banking division is likely to hit Scotland hardest. The integration of HBOS corporate banking into the larger group will see the elimination of 300 jobs north of the border. RBS has also unveiled details of 700 redundancies.

It's the latest in a series of redundancy announcements by Lloyds as it looks to integrate the HBOS business. The bank seems to be slowly edging towards a shocking number of job cuts by unveiling large, but not astronomical, figures on a regular basis this year.

Unite's national officer Rob MacGregor described it as "death by a thousand cuts". "The union will not accept a situation where the LBG makes weekly announcements of hundreds of job losses," he said.

Lloyds has cut 2,225 jobs so far this year, and plans to combine the two commercial banks and close HBOS's 'integrated finance, joint ventures and fund investments' to new business.

RBS revealed the details of the 4,500 redundancies it announced in April in a similar drip-drip fashion. 700 jobs are to go within technology services and group property divisions across the UK, including 200 Scotland.

The bank insists these cuts are part of the figure released in April.

Let's not forget that HBOS's corporate banking division is already slimmed down. In May last year it announced 90 redundancies in its corporate bank. In July, that figure that swelled to plans for 650 job losses within the business banking division over the course of 18 months.

As if to add a slight silver lining, Lloyds has created 300 new roles within the wholesale bank, which the affected staff "may be considered" for. However, it's not clear where these will be based.

The bank says it will aim to redeploy people where possible or achieve the cuts through voluntary redundancies and scaling back its use of contractors.

So what next for Lloyds? The latest talk is around the possbility it may have to sell some core assets at the behest of the European Commission. Chief among the initial targets is Scottish Widows, about which Clive Cowdery's Resolution has already expressed an interest.