News awaited on job losses

Staff at Royal Bank of Scotland International are waiting to hear the extent of job losses in the Isle of Man.

The bank yesterday announced 90 redundancies in its offshore operation, which also includes Jersey, Guernsey and Gibraltar.

It's still unclear how far the axe will fall here, on both RBSI and branches of Isle of Man Bank and NatWest which are owned by the group.

Chief executive Ian Henderson hopes most redundancies will be voluntary, but has not ruled out compulsory job cuts.

He told Manx Radio that with the bank posting record losses last week, staffing cuts were inevitable:

"The reason we are having to do this is unfortunately a reflection on the very severe economic circumstances that we see globally.

"RBS International and our businesses in the Isle of Man, with NatWest, the Isle of Man Bank and Coutts, have had a very successful year.

"So in some respects other bits of the Royal Bank Group are faring much worse than us, in terms of the impact of the need to 'right-size' for the current economic realities."