Over 120 staff in Barclays Africa headquarters in Dubai are being offered an unenviable ultimatum – redundancy or relocation, as the bank shifts the operation to a new office in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Currently, Barclays carries out a number of back office functions related to its Africa operations out of Dubai – HR, finance and head office-related activities – but plans to open a new HQ in Johannesburg on 1 July this year.

The 123 employees affected have until the end of the year to decide. “No Barclays Africa employees will remain in Dubai after that,” a spokesperson for the bank said.

This is not a good time to face redundancy, with many employers currently freezing hiring plans in wake of the regional turmoil. Back office recruitment is particularly badly affected.

For many staff at Barclays, however, this could be a ticket out of the region, which is currently engulfed in political upheaval.

So how many from Dubai will be made redundant? “Too soon to tell,” the spokesperson said. “Lots of our 123 employees will be relocated to other parts of Barclays with the majority moving with the regional office to South Africa. We have just started individual discussions with employees to check what their circumstances and preferences are. We will accordingly decide what works best for each of them.”

Barclays Africa and Absa Africa announced earlier this week that they are combining their operations and setting up the regional headquarters in Johannesburg. Barclays Africa offers retail, corporate and credit card services in Africa and the Indian Ocean.

The Barclays Africa HQ was based in South Africa up until 2006 and is now moving back there, said the spokesperson. “It’s exclusively driven by our desire to work much more closely with Absa.”

Barclays acquired Absa in 2005 and owns 56% of company.

It’s also worth noting that Barclays UAE operations are not part of Barclays Africa. In other words, staff at BarCap, Barclays Wealth and in retail operations can rest easy.