Billionaire Kapoor's Yes Bank Is Said to Reduce 2,500 Jobs

(Bloomberg) -- Yes Bank Ltd. has cut about 12 percent of its workforce to lower expenses and push technology amid an industrywide lending slump, said people familiar with the matter.

In its first widespread reduction of jobs since it was founded in 2004, the lender cut about 2,500 roles, the people said, asking not to be identified as they aren’t authorized to speak to the media. Most of the cuts are in the bank’s sales team, the people said. The bank had 20,851 employees at the end of June, exchange filings show. The Economic Times newspaper earlier reported about the cuts.

Yes Bank, led by billionaire Chief Executive Officer Rana Kapoor, is an outperformer in India’s banking system. It has one of the fastest paces of loan growth while the broader gauge languishes at a two-decade low, because companies staggering under bad debt and excess capacity are awaiting evidence of a pick up in demand before they invest more.

The bank’s push toward automation and innovation will make some roles redundant, and other staff cuts were due to natural attrition and “performance-linked actions,” a Yes Bank spokesman said by email. More details will be communicated in the September-quarter results, the spokesman said, without sharing the exact number of people being dismissed.

The lender continues to hire on a need-based manner and most of the new employees will have modern competencies and a focus on fintech and innovation, the spokesman said.

Yes Bank shares rose 0.3 percent to 377.2 rupees at the close in Mumbai, and have more than doubled in the past year. The lender had 1,020 branches and loans of 1.4 trillion rupees ($17.6 billion) as of end-June, the filings show.

To contact the reporter on this story: Anto Antony in Mumbai at aantony1@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Marcus Wright at mwright115@bloomberg.net, Jeanette Rodrigues, Ravil Shirodkar