Royal Bank of Scotland is cutting its workforce in the Netherlands by around 25%, the Financieele Dagblad reports on Friday.

Some 500 of the 1,900 RBS jobs in the country will go by the end of next year, the paper says. In 2007, RBS had 2,500 employees in the Netherlands.
‘This is a difficult step but it is necessary to secure the future of RBS in the Netherlands,’ the paper quoted local chairman Jan de Ruiter as saying in a staff briefing. Most of the jobs to go will be in back office functions.
The job losses mark the second reorganisation at the Dutch operations within a few months. At the beginning of this year, RBS sold its brokerage and M&A activities to ABN Amro.
RBS’s presence in the Netherlands stems from its disastrous takeover of ABN Amro in 2008. The Scottish bank, which led the €73bn takeover bid, is largely in British government hands after running into financial difficulty. ABN Amro Nederland has been completely nationalised.