Dutch lender ABN Amro to cut 2,350 jobs

THE HAGUE: Dutch bank ABN Amro said Friday it will cut 2,350 jobs over the next three to four years, out of 26,500, as it continues to restructure after nearly collapsing in the global financial crisis.

"Despite continuous efforts to reduce redundancies to a minimum, 1,500 positions are expected to go through redundancies and the remaining 850 through natural attrition," ABN Amro said in a statement.

ABN Amro also said it returned to profit in the first half of the year, with net earnings of 864 million euros ($1.23 billion), compared with a loss of 968 million euros a year earlier.

The Dutch bank was taken over by Royal Bank of Scotland in 2007 in a massive, overpriced deal just before the global financial crisis sparked by collapse of US investment bank Lehman Brothers.

ABN Amro, which had interests across Europe, was subsequently bailed out by the Dutch and Belgian governments and was then broken up into its smaller parts, leaving the business in Holland as the rump holding.

Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2011