BOSTON – After several rounds of layoffs last year, Sovereign Bank says it is hiring 200 bankers to focus on new and existing small businesses in bank branches across the eight East Coast states where Sovereign operates – including 10 employees in Rhode Island.
The bank said Thursday it has also created a “business expansion program,” making a pool of $50 million available to small businesses “to purchase certain assets at a competitive interest rate.” The money would be available for a limited time and on a first-come, first-served basis.
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Sovereign said the small-business specialists would serve in the bank branches, developing relationships with small-business owners.
The new round of hiring at Sovereign follows significant job cuts last year as the bank looked to cut expenses after it was acquired by Madrid-based Banco Santander SA in January 2009.
Sovereign – which has moved its executive offices from Pennsylvania to Boston – announced in December 2008 that it would cut 1,000 jobs in 2009. Four months later, the bank announced another 950 layoffs, including 32 in Rhode Island.
Those layoffs, combined with unfilled vacancies, helped Sovereign shrink its work force by 2,700 last year, according to regulatory filings the bank made last month.
Sovereign had 9,391 full-time and 1,205 part-time employees as of Dec. 31, according to its annual report.
Separately, Santander Chairman Emilio Botin said Friday he expects its profit for this year to be close to last year’s despite concerns about the impact of the European debt crisis on the bank, Bloomberg News reported.
“During this period of crisis, Banco Santander has been the international financial group with the best quality and consistency of profits,” he said. “I am very optimistic about the outlook for the group.”
Additional information is available at sovereignbank.com.
