Possible bad omen for jobs at Clydesdale?

As we've noted before, Scottish staff have come through Clydesdale's redundancy plans remarkable unscathed. Parent company, National Australia Bank, is making 1,400 redundancies at Clydesdale and Yorkshire Bank, but only 60 of them are expected to fall in Scotland.

Celebrations may be premature, however. Australian banking analysts have been claiming that the problems at Clydesdale are far deeper than the current level of cuts indicates and that the bank needs to do some more serious restructuring if it's to resolve the problem.

In the circumstances, today's news that Clydesdale Bank chairman Sir Malcolm Williamson is being replaced by National Australia Bank chief executive Cameron Clyne, is a little worrying. Williamson had been chairman for 8 years and was based in Glasgow. Clyne is based in Sydney. Next time it comes to making redundancies, Clydesdale's Scottish staff may find they've lost an important supporter.