BNP Will Trim 1,400 Corporate- and Investment-Banking Jobs
BNP Paribas to Cut About 1,400 CIB Jobs Globally, Union Says
Antoine Antoniol/Bloomberg
A pedestrian enters the headquarters of BNP Paribas SA in Paris.
A pedestrian enters the headquarters of BNP Paribas SA in Paris. Photographer: Antoine Antoniol/Bloomberg
BNP Paribas (BNP) SA plans to cut about 1,400 jobs at its corporate- and investment-banking unit, or 6.5 percent of the division’s staff, with most reductions aimed at the capital-markets and structured-finance businesses.
“Like all banks, BNP Paribas must adapt its business to the new regulatory environment, which impacts in particular the capital-markets and structured-finance activities,” Julia Boyce, a Paris-based spokeswoman, said by telephone today, confirming figures provided earlier by the firm’s largest union in France.
BNP Paribas said Nov. 3 it expects about 1.2 billion euros ($1.6 billion) in losses from disposals and one-time costs as it speeds up asset cuts to comply with new capital rules. The company has pledged to reduce its balance sheet by 10 percent, including cutting $82 billion in corporate- and investment- banking assets.
The staff reductions at the corporate- and investment- banking unit, home of the trading business, include 373 job cuts in France, the lender said today.
Union officials met with Alain Papiasse, head of the investment-banking unit, this morning in Paris, said Joel Debeausse, a union representative for the Syndicat National de la Banque et du credit at BNP Paribas. Neither Debeausse nor Boyce, the BNP spokeswoman, gave any more details on the breakdown of the job reductions. The corporate- and investment- banking unit had 21,400 employees worldwide at the end of September, according to BNP Paribas’s website.
Profit Plunges
“Our priority is to find alternative jobs for the affected employees,” Debeausse said. The SNB union hopes that “a majority” of the corporate- and investment-banking staff in France affected by the job-reduction plan will stay within BNP Paribas as the bank is trying to find other jobs at other units with comparable wages, the union representative said.
BNP Paribas’s third-quarter profit fell 72 percent because of a 2.26 billion-euro writedown on Greek sovereign debt and losses from selling European government bonds, the bank, France’s largest, said earlier this month.
Chief Executive Officer Baudouin Prot said Nov. 3 the bank would announce “hundreds” of job cuts at the corporate- and investment-banking unit this month. Prot also said that bonuses will have a “significant reduction” because of the earnings decline at the division.
BNP Paribas’s planned asset reductions include cutting U.S. dollar funding needs at businesses that finance aviation, trade, exports and energy and commodities, Prot said Nov. 3.
“It is going to be reduced across the board, from America to Europe, even to Asia,” Prot said in a Bloomberg Television interview, without giving a breakdown of the cuts by business line. “We are reducing the U.S. dollar funding needs in capital markets as well as in financing businesses.”
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Vidya Root at vroot@bloomberg.net
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