UK based Barclays Bank has cut jobs of around 450 employees in India. This amounts to around a tenth of its workforce in the country. According to a source having knowledge on the issue, this has been the fourth and the largest retrenchment process adopted by the bank since December 2008.

This lay off process came up three days back and has been on a much larger scale than the earlier process wherein the bank had pruned 150 employees in December 2009. Pruning process had been done by Barclays in June 2009 and December 2008.

"We may have had to take some tough decisions in the last few months to ensure that we have the right focus. But we are of the view that they were the right ones," Barclays India spokesman said. He clarified that although the actual number of lay offs this year is less than 450 but it is definitely more than 150.

According to a daily based employee who had to suffer the hit, "Most of the job losses involve mid-senior level executives." Amongst those receiving the retrenchment slip are departmental heads, including those looking after divisions such as credit card operations, collection heads and contact centres.

The workforce in the bank's non finance wing Barclays Finance, as well as in the global retail and commercial banking operation have also suffered the hit.

The current job cut has left the Indian operations of the bank with 5000 employees across five business units namely retail & corporate banking; investment banking; wealth management, Barclays Shared Services and Barclays Technology Centre. Barclays Shared Services looks after backend operations while Baclays Technology Centre offers technology solutions.

The bank has also reduced the number of branches in the finance wing. "There is further rationalisation, but we cannot give out the numbers as yet," the spokesman said.

He added that this is most likely to be the last lay off process for the bank in India. "Looking at their bi-annual retrenchment drive, there could be another round coming up in the next few months," said another Delhi-based employee.

On the other hand, the bank is also planning to go for recruitments in specialized fields like premier banking relationship management. It has recently appointed Karan Bhagat to head its Indian operations. The spokesperson said the prime focus of the bank is in corporate and investment banking, besides wealth management businesses.