abn amro is cutting 15% of staff.is aiming to save 700 million euros on top of substantial cuts in a bid to regain earnings. clifford abrahams joins us. thank you so much for joining us, clifford. let's kick it off with job cuts. 15% of your staff. you have 18,000 employees. this is almost 3000. is this it or are there more job cuts to come after this? clifford: no, this is it. 15% represents our plan on reduction through 2024, so it's four years and it is a material amount contributing to the $700 million of cost savings but it's roughly what we have executed in the past few years and we will do it steadily over time. we will retrain our staff. it will not be all that once. it will be study, considered, and deliberate. manus: good morning to you. steady, deliberate, and considered. which portions of the business are going to bear the biggest job losses? will it be the retail branch network? if so, what portion? how does it split down? our cost savings and consequently our role reductions will be across the business.

abn amro. good morning, everybody.uity market futures have been consistently pointing to the downside. the futures picture looks negative. ftse futures down 0.5%. x as well. that should not distract us from what has been a very strong must by historic standards. u.s. futures point to the downside. by zero point 3%. let's have a look at where these european equity markets are opening down. down by 0.3%. stoxx 600 come down by 0.25%. themes to talk about. we have a lot of news flow around the banking sector. investment data coming out of china. more certainty regarding appointments from the biden administration. filling in the blanks. haveg to the narrative we been running with around more political certainty in the united states and the future with a vaccine. all of that looks to be fairly intact in terms of a big picture narrative. european equity markets continue to open up and opening down. the dax down by 0.4%. down by more than 1% this morning. focusing on the banking sector there. opening equity markets to the dow

clifford abrahams is the cfo, abn amro bank. the word that stands out is caution. that to this narrative. the losses have got better. you use the word cautious. of thiscall the bottom loan-loss provisioning cycle today? clifford: good morning. we are pleased impairments are moderated this quarter. we had impairments under 300 billion euros down from 1.8 billion we incurred in the first half of the year. we are pleased impairments are lower. we are expecting impairments for the second half of the year to be lower than the first half, and expecting impairments next year to be lower than this year. whether we are at the bottom or near the bottom it is hard to say. we are cautious and see developments on vaccines, but the economy remains uncertain. our core market relies on the governments will know a lot more when government support starts to phase out next year. annmarie: it was a good quarter in terms of loan-loss provisions, but you are cautious. will you pay a dividend for 2019 once the ecb language comes out and they lift that in december? clifford: you are quite

senior fx is a strategist out abn amro.ow do you suggest traders position going into the next 24 hours especially when it comes to the u.s. dollar? we are moreay that cautious. -- ine seen in the coming the days up to hear that some of the traders and investors have reduced the position they had. if they were long euro they have reduced somewhat. cautioushere will be -- they will be cautious going forward. the dollar until now has been done very well. sentiment was very negative on the dollar. you have more uncertainty. you see the dollar has faltered a bit. it is a standstill of the moment waiting for more clues on what the outcome will be. now we get a bit more cautious. result ing for the the days after. manus: very good day to you. explodingket that is is the yuan volatility. overnight volatility makes equity and bond traders look weak. victory, how does that play out for the yuan and the pboc? >> i would say players or investors have already anticipated a biden win. the yuan hasy rated so strongly as they anticipate he

that was abn amro's cfo. christine lagarde speaks at the policy center forum.number of these webinars. she says europe must do better for job providing equity finance. she also says debt must stabilize at some point but not now. she continues of course talking about fiscal policy, saying it is critically important when services get hit. up next, a full round of brexit, the market, and u.s. politics. hope we can put in place. ♪ it's moving day. and while her friends are doing the heavy lifting, jess is busy moving her xfinity internet and tv services. it only takes about a minute. wait, a minute? but what have you been doing for the last two hours? delegating? oh, good one. move your xfinity services without breaking a sweat. now that's simple, easy, awesome. xfinity makes moving easy. go online to transfer your services in about a minute. get started today. for me fades.you a panel of the o's -- the opec's meetings. recovery on track. china second mnr agree pound -- china's economic rebound gathers pace with manufacturing pmi at a three-year high. shares in cno

ceo ine: that was abn amro -- cfo speaking with us today. the u.s. general meanwhile says rollouts are underway before the end of the month. but for millions of people, not in the highest risk groups, the coronavirus will continue to be a reality will into the spring of 2021. will they wait for a vaccine? how important will testing be as a way to give back -- to get back to normality? joining us is alex templeton. quredy red -- the co-founder. when you look at the numbers out there, so like a million questions, does this test work, do i get false negatives, force -- false positives? the antigen? talk us through the main differences. alex: as you say, quite rightly, there are a couple of tests out there at the moment. one, which we are not seeing much demand for at the moment is antibody testing, which tells .ou if you had exposure most people are talking about the second types of test, like do i have covid-19 right now. the gold standard has been the continues to that be delivered by the government and privately. but we are also seeing these rapid ca

. >> banking news, abn amro will consider paying out its 2019 dividends at the end of 2020, depending on the ecb's recommendation at that time. the dutch lender is targeting a return on equity of 18%. speaking with clifford abrams, said even with a vaccine breakthrough, low interest rates will continue to weigh on the lender in the near term. >> the vaccine isn't when it gets rolled out, it should improve confidence and you'll see increase in demand for loans, which will support our income line. i think we need to balance that against the very low interest rate environment over the last few years, in particular since the pandemic started, we've seen very low rates, and low rates aren't good for banks so that will hold back earnings so you'll see the balance of those two factors. banks, as you know, are economically sensitive we've been hit on the downside and if there's a good recovery, we should benefit on the up side >> sticking with banking space, unicredit's board has reportedly held informal talks over governance piling pressure on the c.e.o. whose mandate comes up for renewal in

what do we know from abn amro.etty sizable other numbers coming in at over 300 million euros, the estimate was 100 10 million euros. more cost-cutting and money set aside for loan losses. the cfo talked about the numbers they plan to give an update on in november. targets in the middle of a pandemic, in an environment where there are many things we cannot control, we will be cautious about targets. i hope our investors will be realistic about what they expect at the end of the month. a little bit of a word of caution. interesting to get that from management there. what about the tech sector, given we have seen it go its own way in the wake of the news out of pfizer, but today looks different. dani: the nasdaq 100 not doing as well as the rest of index futures. it will be an interesting push and pull. is doing poorly in china, specific news regarding regulation. it will not have a direct effect on europe, but could give information on sentiment around technology. we will see if sentiment continues to sour, or if peo