Australia's Westpac Banking Corporation is shedding 150 jobs at its information technology division, according to a report by the Sydney Morning Herald.
The newspaper says Westpac confirmed the redundancies and briefed affected staff yesterday. The job cuts are mainly support staff such as coders in the IT department, which employs about 1600 people.
A Westpac spokesperson said: "As a result of the IT area working closer to business units, there has been a reorganisation requiring less people and we are focusing around a limited number of strategic change programs rather than incremental system enhancements."
Separately, Australia's Commonwealth Bank has reduced staff numbers by 1400 over the last 12 months comprising of 1740 back office positions, partly offset by the creation of 340 customer-facing jobs, according to its Profit Announcement for the full year ended 30 June 2003 which was released yesterday.