Is Lloyds about to cut technologists in its wholesale division?

Lloyds Banking Group is believed to be on the cusp of eliminating 200 technology jobs from its corporate markets division. The move comes after a period of expansion during 2010.

Sources close to the situation have told us that the plan is to reduce IT headcount in the corporate market division by 200 this year. Of this, 100 contractor positions have been earmarked to go.

Lloyds declined to comment, but insiders suggest this is because the move has yet to be announced internally.

This month, Lloyds Bank Corporate Markets revealed that it was closing its equity capital markets division, having picked up just one deal over the last 12 months, and was instead focusing on building its debt financing team.

But the bank was making efforts to build out its capital markets function last year, having hired James Garvey to run the business 2009. Not only was it rumoured to be paying rather handsomely, but at one point in the year was said to be hiring as many as 35 sales and trading staff for its fixed income division.

This effusive approach to recruitment appears to have also been taking place in technology, with IT headcount in its corporate markets division increasing to around 600 last year.

Lloyds' wholesale division has seen a huge improvement year on year, posting a pretax profit 3.23bn, up from a pretax loss of 4.7bn in 2009 as impairments soared. But its corporate markets business was in the red, but a 697m pretax loss still a marked uplift on the 11.7bn deficit in 2009.

The total number of employees in the wholesale division declined by over 400 to 18,103 last year.

Lloyds has, of course, been reducing its headcount rather drastically over the last two years, with total job losses since the HBOS takeover in 2009 now exceeding 22,000. Last year, however, headcount shrunk by just under 3,000.

Technology functions have felt their fair share of pain, with over 40% of roles within its group IT function eliminated in 2010.