Santander denies Abbey job cuts

BANCO Santander Central Hispano said it has no plans to cut 3,000 administrative jobs at Abbey National if its agreed £8.5bn bid for the UK bank succeeds, denying a report in Handelsblatt.

'There is no plan,' an SCH spokesman said at a conference, referring to journalist questions over the Spanish bank plans to downsize the UK bank's workforce.

According to the German financial daily, more than 3,000 administrative and IT jobs could go at Abbey National following the proposed takeover.

BSCH has made it clear that it intends to find about £300m in savings over three years once it has taken over Abbey.

The takeover still has to be approved by Abbey shareholders, but with little prospect of another bid from any UK bank, many analysts see the transaction as a 'done deal'.

It was understood that a little over 10% of the bank's 25,000-strong workforce could be affected.

But Handelsblatt was also the newspaper that quoted a senior BSCH executive earlier this month saying that the bank was 'not interested' in cross-border deals – the bid for Abbey came barely a fortnight later.

Banks were at the centre of trading interest today after a crop of trading updates and results. Lloyds TSB unveiled a dip in half-time earnings, though the fall was in line was expectations.

Lloyds, which made an £18bn bid for Abbey three years ago,

declined to be drawn on the prospects of another bid for the bank today.

But with the regulatory position not having changed since competition authorities blocked its last bid, analysts today said they were not holding their breath for a bid announcement from Lloyds.

Deutsche Bank, meanwhile, announced a 9% fall in net revenue to e5.24bn from e5.6bn. It blamed the drop on unfavourable currency fluctuations and difficult market conditions in convertible bond trading. The figures were at the bottom end of analysts' expectations.

French bank Societe Generale announced second quarter net income of e749m, which was at the upper end of forecasts.