LLOYDS Bank chief executive Antonio Horta Osorio set his sights firmly on his own account balance yesterday by unveiling plans to slash 9,000 staff and axe 150 branches.

Career banker Mr Osorio, whose bonus pot is tied to the share price of firm, boasted that the “group is performing strongly” as he confirmed the news.

The Portuguese former boss of Santander UK — voted by customers as Britain’s worst bank under his leadership — receives a base salary of over a million and hundreds of thousands more in cash for his pension pot.

Banking union Unite national officer Rob MacGregor warned the 10 per cent cuts would “have unknown consequences on customer service and will place even more pressure on staff who have helped get the bank back on the right track.

“The wallets of top executives at Lloyds should not be getting fat by forcing low-paid workers onto the dole.”

He demanded that “executive pay should be cut” if there were compulsory redundancies, adding that the union would be fighting for guarantees that everyone who wanted to stay at Lloyds would be able to do so.

Quarter state-owned Lloyds was bailed out in 2008 to the tune of nearly £20 billion of taxpayers’ cash and has responded by throwing more than 30,000 people on the dole.

But it has struggled since then partly because of repeat mis-selling scandals that have seen it cough up billions in compensation.

Now its remaining front-line workers face an uncertain future under fresh plans to slash high street operations in a dash to cut costs further.