MORE jobs will come to York as a result of the announced merger of General Accident and Commercial Union - but they won't necessarily be for the locals and some staff may lose out to Londoners.

The mixed blessing was relayed to the Evening Press today by General Accident finance director Philip Twyman who predicted that when the Ouse-side building becomes the headquarters of the combined UK life insurance operation - already running at more than four million policyholders and £30 billion in long-term funds under management - business will double in 10 months.

That, he said, would ultimately mean more jobs than the 1,600 already employed there. "We will be asking people from Commercial Union's London headquarters to move to York to help fill out the new management team.

"We have not done a count up at this stage but there will be more jobs across the range of work at York over the next two years."

But Mr Twyman, who under the new regime will be a London-based board member responsible for life insurance operations in the UK, for management operations and for group strategy, added: "The way in which we will choose the people to do these jobs will be on the basis of merit.

"If people in London are better than those in York and are prepared to go there then yes, there will be job losses, but overall numbers will increase over those two years.

"We want to complete this operation sensibly and in a disciplined way and the message I want to convey is that York will be the centre of life assurance excellence for our group."

On paper it looks like York will escape the worst effects of the merger which will mean 3,000 job losses in the UK, another 2,000 world-wide and a saving of £225 million in two years.

But the deal has yet to be put to shareholders and the regulators and might not be until June when the merged organisation is ratified and takes on its new name, CGV plc.

Mr Twyman said that negotiations had taken place over two months staff meetings had been held at York as in other operations in the UK. "We have been telling them why we have done the deal, this is what we will do in the future and the process we will follow to keep you informed".

But there had not been time to look at the implications in detail for each operation. "Now that we know what we are doing staff can participate in the process, we will have details negotiated and all nutted out over the next two months."

Told of Mr Twyman's "mixed blessing" a spokesperson for MSF, the Manufacturing Science and Finance union which has 5,000 members from General Accident nationally said: "We shall be playing our part in the full information and consultative process for the re-organisation resulting from the merger.

"We will represent our members and the entire workforce and get the best for them at such a time of insecurity."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.