Lloyds Banking Group has more than doubled the size of its corporate restructuring operation and launched a major advertising campaign as it adopts a more hands-on approach to working with companies in trouble.

Lloyds Banking Group has more than doubled the size of its corporate restructuring operation and launched a major advertising campaign as it adopts a more hands-on approach to working with companies in trouble.

The bank, a combination of Lloyds TSB and HBOS, has boosted the number of people working in its corporate restructuring units from 250 a year ago to around 450 and hopes to have up to 800 in place by the end of the year.

The move is due in part to the fallout from the recession and in part to adopting across the combined business the Lloyds TSB approach of committing relatively large numbers of staff to dealing with struggling firms.

To boost the teams, which include accountants, lawyers, strategists and marketing experts, it is shifting over dozens of staff who would previously have worked on the deal-making side of the company.

Corporate restructuring at the company has been organised into three divisions. Duncan Parkes, who comes from the Lloyds TSB part of the business, is heading up the business support unit that handles big to large companies and boasts the bulk of the staff.

Another Lloyds staffer Richard Deakin is overseeing business support for real estate.

Well-known Bank of Scotland deal maker Ian Purves, who was head of leveraged finance at the Edinburgh bank, is head of business support for integrated structured and acquisition finance. His focus is on working with private equity companies whose businesses they have bought are struggling.

As part of the move, Lloyds has launched a major advertising campaign in the print media highlighting what it is doing for both growing and struggling businesses and directing them towards its new website, www.supportingbusinesses.co.uk.

Lloyds is facing particular problems with loans arranged by the Bank of Scotland corporate division, which was run by Peter Cummings.

It specialised in areas such as housebuilding, commercial property and retailing, which have been particularly hard hit in the recession. Cummings left after Lloyds acquired Edinburgh-based HBOS.