ING cuts 750 jobs due to economic slowdown

Dutch financial services group ING Groep NV will cut 750 jobs, or 7 percent of its US workforce, as part of a global programme to cope with the economic slowdown, ING spokesmen said on Tuesday.

"As many companies in the United States we need to align operations with market conditions," ING spokesman Dana Ripley said. US companies such as Bank of America Corp have announced job cuts in the past few months to deal with slowing business activity and the U.S. Labor Department said last week that employers cut payrolls by 524,000 in December.

ING will cut the jobs during the first quarter across all its U.S. banking and insurance operations and it will also not fill 170 vacancies in the United States, Ripley said. ING currently has about 11,000 US employees people and a total global workforce of 130,000.

The US job cuts are part of a global initiative to bring costs and operations in line with market conditions as ING said in November, ING spokesman Raymond Vermeulen said. He declined to say if there could be job cuts outside the United States. ING posted a third quarter loss of 478 million euros ($635.6 million) due to 1.5 billion euros of impairments, making it ING's first quarterly loss ever.

Agencies