WESTPAC has started cutting a swathe through the senior managerial ranks at St George Bank as part of tens of millions of dollars of immediate cost savings it is looking to extract from the newly merged group.
With three of the Dragon's top executives already gone - the chief executive, Paul Fegan, the chief finance officer, Michael Cameron, and the retail bank boss, Les Matheson, finished up on Friday - Westpac has begun heavily pruning the tier of managers just below the divisional bosses who previously ran St George.
As few as six of St George's 70 general managers are expected to receive or be offered commensurate positions in the expanded Westpac group. While several are likely to take lower-ranked jobs across the organisation, many members of the Dragon's most senior staff are set to be made redundant.
The moves come as Westpac officially takes control of St George from today following a seven month gestation of their $16 billion tie-up.
Pay-off slips have already gone out to a number of St George general managers, adding to the sense of resignation within the bank's Sydney headquarters, where 800 people are employed.
Dozens of staff cuts are expected to take place there in the coming months after Westpac signalled as part of the merger discussions that it would target head office costs to eventually save as much as $350 million from the two banks' combined operations over the next three years.
As yet, no decision has been taken about the future of the Dragon's George Street building, with the newly appointed group executive Greg Bartlett, now in charge of St George's combined retail and business banking operations, moving into Mr Fegan's old office.
Mr Bartlett, a 25-year-veteran of St George who headed its institutional and business banking division, was the only one of Mr Fegan's nine-strong team of top executives to land a job among the highest level of Westpac executives now in charge of both banks.
Five others have taken senior jobs elsewhere but not at the same rank as they did in St George. The latest is Geoff Lloyd, the Dragon's head of wealth management, who is one of eight general managers in the combined BT and Asgard funds management division under Westpac's Rod Coombe.
Asgard will continue as a separate brand within the BT financial group, as will other Dragon operations such as BankSA in South Australia, whose managing director, Rob Chapman, was one of two leading contenders to run the public face of St George in NSW, Queensland and Victoria. Mr Chapman has been kept in place at BankSA.
Westpac's chief executive, Gail Kelly, who headed St George for five years before moving to the big four bank this year, has committed to retaining the Dragon's 400-strong branch network and its thousands of staff.
