The top brass of StanChart Grindlays is firming up plans that will see nearly 2,000 employees bid adieu. Well-placed sources said that the bank's human resources head, Jaswant Nair, made a presentation to the integration task force -- set up to oversee the merger between StanChart and ANZ Grindlays Bank -- on this issue recently. And if all goes well, the plan is seen going through within a year from now.

StanChart Grindlays has close to 3,300 employees on its rolls at present; the split-up between officers and workmen is approximately fifty-fifty.Highly-placed sources in StanChart Grindlays, however, qualified that ``It is not neccessary that all 2,000 are from StanChart Grindlays alone... you might see the strength of StanChart also get pruned".

And this is not all. Natural attrition is seen happening within StanChart Grindlays once bonus for the year is paid out next month. Exodus of key officials is seen coming through after bonus-payments, but the management is playing smart. It has been made clear to all staffers that they have got to be on the payroll of the bank in October and also not be serving notice period in order to qualify for the bonus. In other words, employees just cannot collect their bonuses and walk off.

Moves are also afoot to spin-off ANZ Investment Bank, a division of the old ANZ Grindlays Bank into a non-banking finance company (NBFC). While this may take some time, it is not clear what will happen to Esanda Finance -- another NBFC within the ANZ Grindlays fold, which is largely into car finance and sundry retail activities. Tension is mounting among personnel within StanChart Grindlays with all these changes -- the kind of which that has not been witnessed in the nearly 150 years that the bank has been in India. It is now clear that there will, indeed, be heavy layoffs. And it will be a messy affair. Operational overlaps galore -- in Calcutta, for instance, both StanChart and StanChart Grindlays have between them around 14 branches. Branch and staff rationalisation will have to content with hostile local unions, more so given the higher number of workmen in StanChart Grindlays.

Rumours abound that to a great extent, the success of staff-reduction in StanChart Grindlays will depend not just on the management's finesse, but also on how the two unions -- Grindlays Bank Employees Union and Grindlays Bank Employees Association -- are tackled.