Banking giant HSBC today said it was "eliminating unnecessary bureaucracy" as it confirmed more than 2,200 job cuts in the UK.
The bank, which employs 52,000 people in the UK, said it would reduce the total number of roles by 3,167 but that it expected roughly 1,000 to remain within the company. The 2,200 who will leave represent a 4.25% cut in staff for the bank.
Senior and middle management positions will be hit, HSBC said, while the bank's 1,250 branches will emerge relatively unscathed from the latest round of cuts.
The losses are part of plans announced by chief executive Stuart Gulliver last year to slash 30,000 jobs, or 10% of the bank's global workforce, by 2013.
David Fleming, national officer at Unite, said: "There is no justification for this awful treatment of staff."