ABN Amro will cut up to 1,000 jobs by 2018 as customers increasingly manage their finances online, part of an overhaul that has helped boost profits and paves the way for the Dutch bank to return to private ownership. Chief Executive Gerrit Zalm had said it will take three solid quarters for him to recommend privatisation to the government. That milestone, analysts say, has now been reached.
In the third quarter, the bank's underlying net profit rose 56 percent year-on-year to 450 million euros, helped by a rising housing market and improvements in bad loans. A flagship of the Dutch financial services industry until the financial crisis, a much diminished ABN Amro was bought by the state in 2008 for 21.7 billion euros ($27.08 billion).
The government and parliament will ultimately rule on the timetable for its re-listing. A government spokeswoman said on Friday that it aimed to return the bank to market as soon as conditions were right. ABN Amro said its decision to cut jobs in its retail arm as clients move to managing finances online would mean a provision of 50-75 million euros in the next quarter. Net interest income was up 15 percent at 1.5 billion euros, while operating income rose 7 percent to 2 billion. Impairment charges due to bad loans fell 17 percent to 287 million euros, with impairments decreasing for both mortgages and small business loans.
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