It always astonishes me to hear on the news "1,000 jobs saved" by this decision.
No there weren't. If KBC closed down, the business would go elsewhere and there would be no net effect on jobs.....
I don't agree that there would be a perfect match to offset the jobs lost Mr. Burgess, well certainly not over the medium term (whatever about short term).
If we look at previous examples such as: Bank of Scotland, ACC Bank, Danske etc. as they closed their businesses.... it took a few years in each case to wind reduce the size of their operations, so the jobs were not lost over night. That allowed time for some staff to look for and secure work elsewhere. Secondly, these Banks transferred the management of their loan books to outsource providers (i.e. Pepper, Capita or Certus) who in turn employed significant numbers of the staff previously employed by the Bank in question (but sometimes, this was only a short term arrangement).
I do agree with the point made above when it comes to the remaining banks sucking up the business that is left when a Bank exits, such as if KBC departed and their customers were sucked up by the remaining Banks... existing staff would be pressed quite hard to take on more work as the custom came in, the exact ratio of staff to customers would not be maintained, hence there is not a 100% match against the overall jobs which might be lost.
All of that said and done, I consider the KBC situation to have been very badly handled - there was no need for them to take 3 years to make this announcement, KBC Ireland returned to profit, the economy is growing, there is far less banking competition so better margins can be obtained, they were advertising, opening branches etc. Had they wanted to get out of Ireland, they would have left a few years ago and not been thinking about leaving now things are good (for the Banks) again. Makes little or no sense when considered solely on circumstances in KBC Ireland and if anything, reflects badly on KBC management for dragging it out so long.... finalised with a bit of poor form propaganda this week when they did finally come out and make the long awaited annoucement.