Rik Vandenberghe, chief executive of ING Belgium, during a news conference at the bank’s headquarters in Brussels EPAThe Dutch banking group ING announced 7,000 redundancies in Belgium and the Netherlands yesterday in response to financial pressures from capital requirement rules and low interest rates. In a statement it warned that 3,500 full-time jobs would disappear in Belgium by 2021 and 2,300 in the Netherlands. A further 1,200 jobs will be lost among external suppliers. Ralph Hamers, the chief executive, blamed a “continuous regulatory burden and a prolonged period of ultra-low interest rates” for the job losses, which amount to 11 per cent of ING’s payroll. The cuts are a major blow to Belgium, where 1,250 ING and…

Source: The Times October 03, 2016 15:56 UTC