PARIS, Sept 10 (Reuters) - Credit Agricole, France's biggest retail bank, said on Wednesday it would cut 500 posts at Calyon, its investment banking unit that has been badly hit by the global credit crunch.
"Calyon expects to cut about 500 positions split equally between French and international operations," Agricole said in a statement.
Calyon employs around 13,000 staff in total. Agricole said the job cuts in France would be based on voluntary redundancies. The credit crisis caused Calyon to post losses over the last three quarters. Loss-making French bank Natixis is also expected to cut jobs in the coming months. Agricole said it was aiming for cost savings of 300 million euros by the end of 2009.
It also said Calyon would close parts of its structured credit and derivatives activities. By 2010, Agricole is targeting net income of 1 billion euros for Calyon, a cost-income ratio of 60 percent and a return on equity (ROE) of 14-16 per cent on the basis of normalised risk-related costs. Agricole shares were down 2.9 percent at 14.33 euros in early morning trade.
(Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta, Editing by Dominique Vidalon and Sue Thomas) Keywords: AGRICOLE/CALYON tf.TFN-Europe_newsdesk@thomson.com vs COPYRIGHT Copyright Thomson Financial News Limited 2008. All rights reserved.
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