Citizens cutting jobs

Citizens Financial Group has begun cutting a “few hundred” jobs across its 13-state footprint, according to a spokeswoman for the Providence-based holding company of Citizens Bank.

It is the bank’s largest round of layoffs since several hundred jobs were eliminated last fall, after its $10.5-billion acquisition of Cleveland-based Charter One Financial, where many of the cuts were made.

Barbara Cottam, Citizens’ senior vice president and corporate communications director, did not specify the exact number or type of jobs Citizens plans to eliminate. But she did say that layoffs would be systemwide.

Citizens, a subsidiary of the The Royal Bank of Scotland, employs about 27,000 people in the Northeast and Midwest, including some 5,400 in Rhode Island. It plans to maintain that level of employees in the Ocean State, said Cottam, who was unsure whether there would be a net loss or gain of jobs in the state.