Sovereign Bank, a financial institution with offices in eight East coast states, has announced they will be hiring and increasing the number of banking jobs in Rhode Island.

The bank, which recently moved its HQ from Pennsylvania to Boston, plans on hiring around 200 bankers to focus on small business ventures.

Ten employees in Rhode Island will be hired for various branches.

The bank specialists will focus on building relationships with small businesses. They’re marketing it as a business expansion program and are making a pool of $50 million available for small businesses. These are much-needed funds in today’s economy.

Assets will be able to be purchased at a very competitive rate, according to the company.

In January 2009, Sovereign was acquired by Madrid-based Banco Santander SA. After the acquisition, they were forced to make several company-wide eliminations and restructure their employee base. About 1,000 jobs were cut. Total, Sovereign shrank its workforce by almost 3,000 when unfilled positions were taken into account along with the layoffs.

The chairman of the bank remains optimistic about profits this year compared to last year despite the European financial crisis, as reported by Bloomberg.com.

Sovereign currently has around 9,300 full time employees.

CitiGroup has announced nationwide terminations, including a bevy of finance jobs in Rhode Island. For more information, click here.

According to Reuters, Citigroup said on Tuesday that it would shut about 18 percent of CitiFinancial’s 1,833 U.S. branches and stop making loans at another 182 branches.

The decision to close or stop making loans at the various branches depends on consumer demand and regional economies, Mary McDowell, the Baltimore, Maryland unit’s chief executive officer, said in an interview on Tuesday.

“A lot of potential buyers like to see a business that has future growth potential; and as the economy has changed over the last couple of years, we are not lending as much as we were,” she said. “If you spread the customers over all the branches that we had, while you can grow the business, it’s very hard to grow the individual branch.”

After the reorganization, which will be effective July 1, CitiFinancial will no longer operate full-service branches in Connecticut, Nevada and Rhode Island. It will retain loan-servicing centers in those states.

Citigroup will also rename CitiFinancial by the end of the year, but McDowell said the company has not yet decided on a new moniker.

In March, Citigroup agreed to pay a $1.25 million fine to settle allegations by 35 U.S. states that CitiFinancial failed to report 91,127 residential mortgage loans to the federal government as required by law.

McDowell said Citigroup’s decision to reorganize CitiFinancial was “not at all” related to the settlement.

CitiFinancial was previously known as Commercial Credit, the Baltimore-based lender that Sanford “Sandy” Weill bought in 1986 and made part of the foundation of what is now Citigroup.

CitiFinancial is now among the businesses that Citigroup is hoping to sell or wind down.

Citigroup shares were down 1.5 percent at $3.90 in late-afternoon trading on Tuesday.

One well-known investment company is helping to create finance jobs in Rhode Island.

Fidelity Investments has announced its plan to move 500 jobs from other locations to the company’s Smithfield location. The company currently employs about 2,300 workers in Smithfield. The new jobs are expected to pay from $50,000 to $60,000 per year.

The Smithfield operation handles a variety of tasks for the company, including direct investment, the company’s online retail brokerage operation and the company’s retirement-savings operation, which includes administering 401(k), 403(b) and other employer-sponsored retirement-savings plans.

(more…)