Bank of Ireland is performing better and paying less. The average employee now earns €63k

It’s Bank of Ireland results day.

The good news is that bank's underlying pre-tax loss was down to €1.52bn from €3.5bn for 2011, and that the share price was up nearly 9% at one point this morning.

Even better, the corporate and treasury division went from a massive €973m loss in 2010 to a healthy €386m profit in 2011, and within this globally markets specifically achieved a 69% year-on-year increase in profits – suggesting things are substantially looking up for Bank of Ireland’s salespeople and traders.

The bad news is that Bank of Ireland is still cutting staff. At the end of December it had 13,671 people – down 613 on December 2010. As the Wall Street Journal points out, Bank of Ireland has cut 3,500 people since the onset of the financial crisis in 2007.

More cuts may yet come. Chief executive Richie Boucher explicitly stated that there would be more redundancies as B of I cuts back on businesses, but declined to elaborate further.

So far, however, Bank of Ireland's job cuts look fairly moderate. Over the past year, headcount has fallen a mere 4%. Over the same period, however, compensation costs have declined 15%. The average employee at the bank earned €63k for 2011, compared to €70k for 2010.