ING Plans to Move 43 More Trading Jobs to London From Amsterdam

(Bloomberg) -- ING Groep NV will move about 43 trading jobs from Amsterdam to London, adding to a push started last year to centralize some financial markets operations in the U.K. capital.

The Dutch bank plans to relocate global equity products, credit trading, e-trading and e-data analytics as well as some supporting activities, according to an internal memo to staff obtained by Bloomberg News. A spokeswoman for the company in Amsterdam confirmed the contents of the memo, which was reported earlier on Wednesday by Dutch newspaper Het Financieele Dagblad.

ING starting shifting staff to London in October against a swell of expectation for global lenders to relocate personnel elsewhere within the European Union following Britain's vote to leave the trading bloc. While the Dutch bank may need to review the relocations in the future, it's pushing to centralize operations to save costs. 

“What we currently see and expect doesn't change our plan,” ING Chief Executive Officer Ralph Hamers said on the sidelines of the bank's annual shareholder meeting in Amsterdam earlier this month. “Things may become much clearer as to which banking services will continue to have a passport back into the EU and which ones will not, and at that moment in time, we would probably have to review our activities.”

The job relocations come as ING pushes to simplify operations in trading hubs and eliminate about 5,800 roles across the company, or about 11 percent of its workforce. The Amsterdam-based lender expects to save about 900 million euros ($1 billion) a year through the program, which includes about 2,300 cuts in the Netherlands and some 3,500 reductions in Belgium over five years.

To contact the reporter on this story: Richard Partington in London at rpartington@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Michael J. Moore at mmoore55@bloomberg.net, Jon Menon