Richard Branson's Virgin Group would cut jobs at Northern Rock if it ended up taking over the embattled mortgage lender, the company said today.
This is a direct reversal of an earlier commitment not to lay off workers.
Job losses among Northern Rock's approximately 6,000 staff would pile fresh pressure on Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who is struggling to secure a private sector rescuer for Britain's biggest casualty of the global credit crisis.
The BBC cited Jayne-Anne Gadhia, the head of Virgin Money, as saying the company would cut around 1000 jobs.
"We can't continue to make the promise that there will be no redundancies, but we would aim very much to minimise any reductions," she told BBC radio.
A Virgin spokesman said the estimate of 1,000 redundancies was inaccurate and the number would be less. He declined to estimate the number but said it would plan to make as many reductions as possible by not replacing staff who leave.