Three hundred more jobs are to go from one of Glasgow's most iconic office buildings in another twist to its chequered history.

Three hundred more jobs are to go from one of Glasgow's most iconic office buildings in another twist to its chequered history.

Insurance giant Pearl yesterday announced it is closing down its base at 301 St Vincent Street, which once housed Britoil and the former Scottish headquarters of BP, but became the Abbey Life building where it more recently has been home to thousands of financial services jobs.

Pearl said a total of 480 jobs would go in Glasgow and Peterborough over the next two years. The bulk of operations will be transferred to the group's site near Birmingham.

The move comes months after Pearl told 300 workers in Glasgow that their jobs were safe after the group's £3.6bn takeover of rival Resolution Life.

Trade union Unite criticised the move as a "slap in the face for the workforce".

Unite deputy general secretary Graham Goddard said: "Over the last two years the workforce in Glasgow has been bounced from one employer to another. Despite this, they have remained professional and continued to deliver for their various employers, only to be rewarded by losing their jobs."

Yesterday's announcement is the latest turn in the history of the landmark city office block which was commissioned in 1986 by Britoil and was inherited by BP as one of the prizes of its takeover of the oil exploration company.

The marble fittings and expensive art collection in the building, which is highly visible as motorists cross the Kingston Bridge on the M8 on the way into the centre of Glasgow, saw it labelled as one of the most opulent offices in the city.

It was effectively vacated by BP in 1993 after it moved its Scottish headquarters to Aberdeen and immediately become one of the main headquarters for Glasgow's up-and-coming financial sector soon after being taken over by Abbey Life Assurance the following year.

Since then there have been a dizzying series of changes.

Up to 3000 were employed in the building by Abbey National's life businesses (Scottish Mutual and Scottish Provident) before it was bought by Spanish bank Santander for £8bn in 2004.

In July that year, David Wallace, then head of the Scottish business, said Abbey was considering increasing the capacity of its main Glasgow building from 3300 to 3800 in view of the potential to transfer functions into the city.

By the end of 2005, after he had left the company, employee numbers in the main Glasgow offices had fallen to 2200 compared to 3000 at the end of 2004.

Santander retained a relatively large presence in Glasgow until the summer of 2006 when Resolution Life paid £3.6bn to acquire its life assurance arm. Under the deal Resolution inherited about 1700 staff based at the St Vincent Street site.

The following May Resolution announced that up to 500 jobs would be lost under a deal which involved transferring 2000 workers to the Capita group.

Capita now employs 1650 at the site but says up to 300 of those posts are currently "at risk" as new IT systems and processes are introduced over the next two years.

Santander also retains a presence at the building, including a branch of the Abbey bank, but confusion remained yesterday about the exact numbers employed in the building. No-one from Santander, which is understood to own the property, could be reached for comment yesterday.

Meanwhile, travel company Thomas Cook, yesterday announced plans to close its call centre and credit control operations in Glasgow and transfer them to Falkirk.

The company said it had entered into a 90-day consultation period with unions concerning 158 employees who would be potentially affected and would strive to retain as many as possible.

A spokesperson for Scottish Enterprise said of yesterday's announcements: "Although these are challenging times and the potential redundancies are disappointing, Glasgow's economy remains resilient.

"We recognise that many of our customers are facing challenges due to tough market conditions, and are working with them to help businesses address some of the issues arising from the changing economic situation as well as identify future opportunities."

There are currently just over 37,000 people directly employed by the financial services sector in the West of Scotland - 26,000 of those jobs are in Glasgow.