Lloyds Banking Group is back in the black again to the tune of 1.6bn, after managing to stem loan losses that battered it in the first half of 2009.

In keeping with recent form, its earnings statement is a veritable tome, coming in at over 130 pages.

While the bank battles questions on the politically sensitive topic of increasing lending to businesses, now’s also a good time to take stock of the, um, politically sensitive topic of job losses.

A whopping 16,000 roles have been axed since the HBOS takeover, although the bank says that the “overwhelming majority of role reductions have been achieved through re-deployment, natural turnover and voluntary redundancy. Only a small proportion left via compulsory redundancy.”

Maybe so, but the bank continues to scale back costs, having saved 650m in the first half of this year alone, largely through reduction in staff numbers.

Still, as the breakdown of staff numbers below shows, headcount hasn’t reduced dramatically so far this year, and retail banking has even seen an increase:

Analyst reaction to Lloyds’ results (Guardian)

Two senior credit traders leave BarCap after tough quarter (Financial News)

And Tim Bond, its influential strategist, has resigned (Financial Times)

HSBC has a new head of European interest rate strategy (Bloomberg)

BNY Mellon taps BlackRock for new asset management head (Dealbook)

Connecticut looks to woo hedgies from New York (Deal Journal)

Do not underestimate the City’s contribution (Independent)

Nomura expanding commodity trading function in Asia (Bloomberg)