Emirates NBD, the leading bank of UAE, is to cut as many as 750 jobs as part of an internal restructuring, just six months after its acquisition of Dubai Bank.
The cuts, affecting about 15 per cent of Emirates NBD’s staff, will leave its subsidiaries – including Emirates Islamic Bank and Dubai Bank – unscathed.
Abu Dhabi’s largest property developer, Aldar Properties, in October announced it would slash its workforce by 24 percent as it seeks to cut costs.
The developer plans to shed 105 jobs to match its manpower needs to its scaled-back construction schedule.
An emirate-wide slowdown of projects has prompted several job cuts in Abu Dhabi in recent months.
The capital’s authority for culture and heritage, organisers of Abu Dhabi Film Festival and Abu Dhabi Book Fair, reportedly let go of around 160 of its 500 employees.
Dubai-based investment bank Shuaa Capital announced a round of job cuts in November as it moved away from retail brokerage business after markets in its home base declined and losses increased.
In the first phase 29 people will be affected.
Gulf Air, Bahrain’s state-owned carrier, fired 200 employees and reported a 25 percent drop in bookings in the first five months of the year because of unrest in the Middle East.
Barclays Plc will move its Africa headquarters in Dubai back to Johannesburg in a move that may affect 123 employees.
Staff will be given the chance to relocate or leave the bank before the Dubai office closes at the end of the year.
HSBC is planning to lay off up to three percent of its 12,000-strong workforce in the Middle East and North Africa as it seeks to cut costs.
HSBC, one of the largest and oldest international banks in the region, said the layoffs would mostly take place in the bank’s corporate and retail banking business.
Some of the 60 jobs due to be axed in the Arabic section of the BBC World Service may be saved, director Peter Horrocks said yesterday.
Horrocks told the Foreign Affairs Select Committee yesterday that the Arabic-speaking journalists had done a “fantastic job” in reporting the uprisings in the Arab world. “We maybe able to alter some of these job losses,” he said.
Law firm DLA Piper cut eight jobs, while a “small number” of lawyers have taken voluntary sabbaticals.
The company is hopeful of making no additional changes to an “excellent team that is doing well in a testing market”.
From Arabian Business
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