More than 2,000 sign up to redundancy plan at Greece's NBG-source

ATHENS Mon Dec 30, 2013 2:46pm EST

Dec 30 (Reuters) - More than 2,000 people have signed up for a voluntary redundancy scheme at Greece's biggest lender, National Bank (NBG), aimed at shedding about 15 percent of its workforce to cut costs, an NBG official told Reuters on Monday.

Hammered by Greece's six-year recession, the country's four major lenders had billions pumped into them to prop them up after a sovereign debt restructuring last year and rising bad loans and are now restructuring to trim their cost base.

NBG employees, including staff of small lenders Probank and FBB which were taken over earlier this year, had until Dec. 30 to decide whether to take the offer.

The bank will announce on Tuesday whether it will accept all the offers, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

NBG had said the cost of the scheme if 2,000 employees accept the offer will come to 160 million euros ($221 million)and generate annual payroll savings of about 120 million euros.

In September, Piraeus Bank shed about 12 percent of its workforce through a similar redundancy scheme and last month Eurobank said more than 10 percent of its staff took a voluntary exit offer.

Piraeus, Alpha, National and Eurobank completed a 27.5 billion euro recapitalisation in June to restore their solvency after losses from writedowns on government debt and bad loans. ($1 = 0.7239 euros) (Reporting by George Georgiopoulos; Writing by Karolina Tagaris; Editing by Alison Williams)