According to Barry Robson, managing director of Genesis, those staff who had received redundancy notices had been encouraged to apply for the new vacancies but that it was too early to tell who would be successful.
He blamed the cuts on the post-‘Mortgage Day’ slump in the industry and said Genesis had to restructure to align itself to this year’s market conditions, which he anticipated would be flat for at least the first half.
“There was always going to be re-alignment this year because 2004 was a hard year to call with the impact of regulation,” said Robson.
“But the company will continue to move forward; we have just recruited a new head of IT and this is an area we will continue to invest in.”
Peter Beaumont, sales and marketing director at Mortgages plc, said: “Although we own Genesis they are run independently from us. I think that most networks started 2004 saying they wanted a certain number of ARs but very few achieved those numbers so there will be a lot of restructuring across the industry.”
Tony Jones, managing director of Skipton-owned distributor and packager Pink, commented: “This is not the first news of this kind to emerge recently and unfortunately I doubt very much if it will be the last time we will read this kind of story.”
