ABBEY, the British bank recently acquired by Santander Central Hispano, yesterday shed two of its longest-serving directors in a reorganisation aimed at cutting costs.

Mark Pain, the customer sales director and former finance director, and Jasmin Jetha, the IT director, are to leave the bank. He will receive a payoff of £650,000 and she one of £400,000.

Mr Pain has been a board member for six years and Ms Jetha for three years. Their departures came as Santander brought in four executives to serve as non-executive directors on the board of the Spanish bank.

Abbey, which was taken over in a £9.6 billion deal this month, said that it planned to merge its IT and customer operations divisions. The merged division will be be run by Tony Wyatt, the customer operations director.

The bank also plans to merge its insurance and asset management divisions. A spokeswoman for Abbey said that the merger underlined the importance of the two businesses.

There had been speculation that Abbey would sell the businesses. The bank said that the mergers were designed to help the company to achieve previously announced revenue benefits and cost savings.

When the Santander-Abbey merger was sealed in September, the banks said that the deal would lead to €450 million in cost savings and €220 million in revenue gains over the next three years, with plans to cut about 3,000 Abbey jobs.

Francisco Gomez-Roldan, Abbey’s new chief executive, yesterday said: “My goal is to accelerate the bank’s turnaround plan.”

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