UK to lose 110,000 finance, business jobs - poll

By Olesya Dmitracova

LONDON, Sept 17 (Reuters) - Financial and business services companies in Britain expect to shed around 110,000 jobs in total in the year to next April, with the newly unemployed set for a tough search in an increasingly skewed job market.

Senior executives told pollsters commissioned by Hay Group management consultants they expected their workforce to shrink by almost 2 percent on average in 2008-2009. The poll was carried out in June, a time then the credit crunch had already made executives pessimistic over the jobs outlook.

The figures were released this week after investment bank Lehman Brothers Holdings LEH.P filed for bankruptcy protection and Bank of America (BAC.N) agreed to buy Merrill Lynch MER.N in a deal that would likely put about 24,000 of Merrill's non-broker employees worldwide out of work, according to an estimate.

These new waves of jobless financiers will make getting back into work a lot harder.

"The war for talent is effectively over," financial recruiter Robert Thesiger said on Wednesday.

"This is a vent that changes the whole pattern of the recruitment cycle," he said in reference to the Lehman failure, adding that this month there will be significantly more jobseekers than jobs.

During August, the number of new financial job vacancies in London fell 34 percent year-on-year, in line with a 37 percent decline in the number of candidates, according to Morgan McKinley headhunters headed by Thesiger.

The financial headcount in Britain will not return to current levels until 2010-2011, the survey showed. Hay Group polled 40 financial services executives out of a total 120 executives in the survey. (Editing by Quentin Bryar)