(1 May 2012 – Australia) NAB will cut thousands of jobs and close dozens of branches in the south of England in an attempt to curb the growing tide of bad debts from its UK business.NAB CEO Cameron Clyne announced the changes to its Yorkshire and Clydesdale banks in England and Scotland yesterday amid a 16 percent net profit loss for the first half of its 2012 financial year, owing largely to issues in the UK.
Bad debts skyrocketed as losses mounted in the UK’s commercial property sector, forcing NAB to increase provisions to cover for troubled loans by almost 15 percent.
With Britain’s commercial property market in freefall, NAB said it would ban all further lending to the sector while shifting its existing £6.2 billion (A$9.6 billion) exposure onto its Australian balance sheet and gradually running it off.