Lloyds to axe 460 in £1 Halifax sale

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LSL Property Services — which already owns the Your Move chain of agencies — is buying Halifax Estate Agents for the nominal sum, with Lloyds leaving £22.2 million on the loss-making chain's balance sheet to cover restructuring costs.

Lloyds warned that 121 Halifax banking counters within the offices will close early in the new year. The closures will result in the loss of around 360 permanent positions, with another 100 part-time staff also facing the axe. The staff cuts would bring the total number of job losses at Lloyds to around 8,000 since the start of the year.

But the part-nationalised lender added that compulsory redundancies will be a last resort, and that it hopes to redeploy staff where possible and use natural attrition and voluntary redundancy to avoid lay-offs.

LSL Property Services, which also owns the Reeds Rains and Intercounty brands, paid about £10 million less for the branches than analysts had expected.

The acquisition means that LSL will overtake Connells which will make it the country's second-largest estate agencies chain, after Countrywide. The Halifax branches will be renamed under LSL's existing brands.

The deal is set to be completed by mid-January next year, subject to the approval of LSL's shareholders who meet next month.

Lloyds has been keen to offload the division as it was considered a distraction from the main banking business.