Big job cuts coming to NAB’s markets unit
National Australia Bank is preparing to hand down redundancies to about 10 per cent of the staff manning its 600-strong markets division, Street Talk can reveal.
NAB boss Ross McEwan. Oscar Colman
Sources said NAB would begin working through the job cuts as early as this week, but was yet to formally announce the changes internally. They are expected to be targeted at the capital markets types working within NAB’s corporate and institutional banking unit, where its markets business sits with a team of about 600.
“We regularly look at the ways we work to ensure we are serving our customers well. If change occurs that impacts roles, our priority is on ensuring we provide care and support to those individuals impacted,” a spokesperson for NAB said.
The markets team is well known to investors and bankers, being a regular in big corporate bond issues and in leveraged buyout financing. Just last week, it was among the banks working on NAB’s own hybrid issue as well as on PAG Asia Capital’s financing to buy KKR’s pubs roll-up Australian Venue Co.
NAB is swinging the axe despite strong a 16.6 per cent increase in C&IB’s first-half revenue to $940 million. Markets was a key driven in the division’s topline growth and more than made up for lower lending volumes.
However, NAB seems to be taking cues from its Big Four peers Westpac and Commonwealth Bank, which have already tightened the belt in staffing levels in a bid to lower costs. For NAB’s part, its expenses rose by 11.6 per cent – or 6.3 per cent if its acquisition Citi’s consumer business is excluded – in the first half versus the same period last year. (First half being end of March for NAB).
C&IB has been led by David Gall for the past five years, who had previously headed
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