More than 600 workers are leaving the high street bank, BPI, the majority under a redundancy programme that started in April 2017.
The cost of the programme to date is €106 million which will bring an annual saving of €36 million.
"Banco BPI announces that the early retirement and voluntary termination programme announced on April 27th, 2017 has been completed. As a result of the programme, 519 employees will leave the bank, 292 taking early retirement and 227 under voluntary termination," according to a communication sent to the Portuguese Securities Market Commission.
This employee reduction programme was started after the bank was taken over by Spain’s CaixaBank at the beginning of 2017.
In total, 617 BPI employees will leave the bank in the next two years, with no further redundancies planned.
BPI already has been slimming down by closing branches and staff reduction activities. At the end of March 2017, BPI had 5,445 employees and 538 branches in Portugal.
This was not enough and the bank reported losses of €122 million for the first quarter, affected by the loss-making sale of 2.0% of its shares in Banco de Fomento de Angola in January.
The bank’s board still has Fernando Ulrich as executive chairman, while the new owners wait for the European Central Bank to clear the Spaniard, Pablo Forero, for the job of running the business.
