Laurentian Bank cuts jobs, shuts equity research business

Reuters
·1 min read
Pedestrians walk past the head offices of Laurentian Bank in Montreal

(Reuters) - Laurentian Bank of Canada has cut 2% jobs across the company and shut down its equity research unit as a part of a planned restructuring of its business, the lender said on Thursday.

The reduction in the workforce was notified to the employees by CEO Eric Provost through an internal note on Wednesday, it said.

Laurentian Bank, which launched a strategic review in July 2023, said it considered a variety of options, including selling itself and divesting certain businesses.

The Canadian bank, however, reportedly struggled to find an acquirer and the country's top banks - Bank of Nova Scotia and Toronto-Dominion Bank - had backed out from bidding for the company.

Laurentian Bank named Provost as chief executive late last year following an IT outage that disrupted online services, just days after ending the strategic review without finding a buyer.

Shares of the lender have fallen 35.8% since it launched its strategic review last July.

(Reporting by Nivedita Balu in Toronto and Pritam Biswas in Bengaluru; Editing by Shailesh Kuber)