Lloyds Banking Group is preparing to axe 15,000 jobs under a new £1 billion per year cost savings plan being prepared by top management, according to a report in the Sunday Times.
The broadsheet said the bank is preparing to cut hundreds of jobs at its head offices in London and streamline its international network as part of a strategic review being led by the bank's new boss Antonio Horta-Osorio.
The reports come just days after the bank axed a further 300 jobs, and moved to close one of its call centres in Wales, bringing the total number of job losses at the taxpayer-backed institution to 28,000 since the start of the banking crisis.
Horta-Osorio is set to lay out his plans in a meeting with analysts at the end of the month. The Sunday Times says he is unlikely to put a figure on the number of jobs to be shed, but will instead draw up a series of cost-cutting targets.
Speaking to newswire Reuters, a Lloyds spokesman dismissed the report as 'purely speculative".