Italy’s top bank UniCredit announced Wednesday it would cut its staff by 18,200 within two years to save €1.6 billion ($1.7 billion).
A third of the posts are to go as UniCredit sells off a bank in Ukraine and a joint venture between its Pioneer unit and Santander, the bank said in a statement, AFP reported. The rest are to be achieved through cuts in Italy, Germany and Austria, leaving the bank with 111,000 employees in 2018. The bank hopes to achieve a net profit of €5.3 billion by then.
UniCredit’s chief executive Federico Ghizzoni described the plan as “rigorous and at the same time ambitious ... in a persistently tough macroeconomic environment, marked by historically low interest rates and decelerating worldwide economic growth”.
