Axe to the branches
OUR WELFARE services already employ twice as many people as our banks, and the banks mean to keep it that way. Amid cries of pain and shock, they are hacking back their numbers and their network. One bank has reduced its staff by 14,000 in the last three years and is now sharpening the axe all over again. It wants to cut as much as £650 million out of its costs, and some departments have been told that over the next five years they must shed a quarter of their staff. This, as it happens, is Citicorp of New York, by some measures the biggest bank in the world. The economics of bank- ing and the market for its services are changing, there and here. The Governor of the Bank of England was saying this week that banks are not public utilities. Nor wel- fare services, either.
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