Australia Finance Job Losses Near 7,000; More Likely
By Gemma Daley and Malcolm Scott
March 11 (Bloomberg) -- Australia’s finance industry, which shrank in 2008 for the first time in 13 years, shed 6,768 jobs since the start of last year and more cuts are likely, an industry union said.
Banks including Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. and brokerages such as Goldman Sachs JB Were sacked workers as the global credit crisis worsened, the Finance Sector Union of Australia said. The list will swell as companies including AMP Ltd. and Westpac Banking Corp. trim staff, the union said.
“There will be a very large number of jobs lost,” Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner told the national Press Club today. “Cleary, there are job losses occurring in certain parts of the economy.”
Australia’s financial industry is carrying out the biggest round of staffing cuts since the early 1990s, when the nation’s economy was last in recession. Globally, more than 280,000 financial-services jobs have been lost since July 2007 as credit losses and writedowns approach $1.2 trillion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Westpac hasn’t made any announcements about job cuts, said David Lording, a spokesman for the Sydney-based bank. AMP shed about 300 workers in the last quarter of 2008, according to Sarah Hudson, the company’s group media manager.
Financial services account for 7.8 percent of Australia’s A$1 trillion ($643 billion) economy, the Investment and Financial Services Association estimates. There are about A$1.3 trillion in funds under management in the country.
The following table shows job cuts by Australian financial firms
since the start of last year. Numbers are according to the
Finance Sector Union of Australia.
Company Total
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ABN Amro 150
Allco Finance 90
AMP 227
ANZ 835
AXA 90
Babcock & Brown 850
Citigroup 104
GE Money 775
Goldman Sachs 10
IAG 653
Macquarie Bank 1247
Merrill Lynch 20
NAB 405
Perpetual 200
Suncorp 547
Toronto-Dominion 65
UBS 50
Westpac 450
-----------------------
Total 6768
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