Lloyds TSB -550 jobs to go in back office revamp

LONDON: British bank Lloyds TSB said more than 550 jobs might go by the end of the year as part of a shake-up in its back-office processing division.

A Lloyds spokeswoman said on Wednesday that five UK sites would be affected including London, Tonbridge, Chorley, Newton Aycliffe and Glasgow.

Three of them -- Chorley, Newton Aycliffe and Glasgow -- will close, the spokeswoman said, as the work is transferred to larger sites including Andover, Birmingham and Gillingham.

Britain's fifth-largest bank, which is keen to shave 121 million pounds ($211 million) a year from its back-office costs by 2010, said it would try and redeploy affected staff.

The spokeswoman also said that 105 jobs would be moved to India from Britain but that new roles would be found for existing workers.

Lloyds posted a pretax profit of nearly 3.5 billion pounds for 2005 last month, up from 3.3 billion the year before.

Its shares closed down 0.2 percent on Wednesday at 538-3/4p, valuing the business at more than 30 billion pounds.