Unions accuse Bank of Ireland of 'vulgar greed' over 2,100 job cuts

Bank of Ireland was accused of "corporate greed" yesterday as it announced plans to cut 2,100 jobs - 12% of its workforce - and admitted it was considering the sale of its Bristol & West branch network.

The Irish bank bought the former building society in 1997 and is considering a number of "expressions of interest" for the 98 Bristol & West branches that remain open.

Alliance & Leicester is understood to be among the bidders to have submitted proposals to Goldman Sachs, the investment bank that is handling the sale.

BoI, which aborted full-scale merger talks with Alliance & Leicester in June 1999, refused to name the potential buyers for branches while A&L refused to comment.

If BoI does decide to sell the branches, it will raise a question mark over at least another 750 jobs.

The financial union Amicus, which represents 400 BoI workers, condemned the job cuts. Colm Quinlan, an Amicus official, said: "We have assured our members that we will resist in the strongest terms any attempt to sacrifice jobs purely to enhance massive profits; that we will not countenance any proposal that includes compulsory redundancies, and will oppose any proposal to outsource jobs abroad."

Irish union officers are scheduled to meet with Bank of Ireland executives today. Larry Broderick, general secretary of the Irish Bank Officials' Association, which represents 7,000 BoI workers, said: "This is corporate greed at its most vulgar."

The job cuts are intended to cut costs by €120m (£83m) over the next four years. The bank was unable to rule out compulsory redundancies.

The announcement about job cuts was made in a trading update that showed the bank expects its full-year profits, which are to be released in May, to rise by 7%. The group no longer wants the Bristol & West branches because only 7% of its sales are executed through them.

The Irish bank sold its UK financial advisers arm, Chase de Vere, earlier this year and now wants to turn its British outfit into a business-banking operation, conducted through its 68 own-brand branches, as well as going into mortgages and consumer banking through a joint venture with the Post Office.

The Post Office venture, for which BoI provides unbranded, or "white-label" products, is forecast to lose £38m.

The Bristol & West branches might prove attractive to a number of possible bidders because in addition to their high-street presence, the sale also includes customer deposits. The bank is keeping the mortgage business, however.

The bank first admitted that the future of the Bristol & West operation was in doubt last November, when it revealed that it was conducting a review of the branches after closing 33 of them.

While a sale is not the only option being considered, the City now believes this is the most likely option.

BoI said it was in "the process of evaluating ... expressions of interest as part of the review of all of the options for this business".

It gave no indication, however, of how long the evaluation would take and when a decision would be made.