Banking job cuts near 160,000

Banks worldwide are shedding jobs as stricter regulations and euro zone worries take their toll on trading income and investment banking units. Many began outlining layoffs plans 18 months ago and are now cutting more deeply as they reassess their entire business to cope with tougher capital rules, while some are cutting because of acquisitions or mergers they are involved in.

Switzerland's UBS in October added 10,000 job cuts to the 3,500 it had earmarked last year, after deciding to exit most of the rates and debt trading. Staff cuts announced since mid-2011 or reported to be in the works at major banks have now reached 158,000.

Below are aggregates of various redundancy rounds. They are likely to be conservative figures, as not all banks have announced lay-offs publicly, and the number does not take into account smaller investment banks, boutiques and brokers. Read more >>

More Bank Job Cuts on Way as "Game's Up"

Credit Suisse is rumored to be the latest major bank set to announce large job cuts, and it is unlikely to be the last, Peter Toogood, head of investment at Old Broad Street Research, told CNBC Tuesday. “The game’s up. There’s no transactions, M&A isn’t happening, this is what deleveraging looks like. It’s a decade of austerity and that makes people feel more unlucky,” he said.

“Investment banks are going to struggle. There’s not going to be mass lending going on. The leverage game is over and people can’t accept it. Volumes are declining en masse and their headcounts are too high.” Trading volumes have declined overall since March 2009, with falls in U.S. stock trading volumes in each month this year. In April, there were 6.5 billion trades on average per day, compared with 12.1 billion at the market’s height in 2008. Both the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq reported that trading fell in the first quarter of 2012.

Lending has also shrunk, both because of worries about bank capitalization and because of reluctance to borrow money on the part of companies. When acquisitions happen, they are often based on cash rather than leverage, which means that banks have a smaller size of the pie. Moody’s mass downgrade of the world’s biggest investment banks last week showed the increasing worries about the sector. Read more >>

Record Pay on Wall Street

In 2010, total compensation and benefits at publicly traded Wall Street banks and securities firms hit a record of $135 billion, according to an analysis by The Wall Street Journal. The total is up 5.7% from $128 billion in combined compensation and benefits by the same companies in 2009.

At 25 large financial firms that have reported full-year results, revenue rose to $417 billion, another all-time high, even though last year's 1% increase was just a fraction of the industry's revenue jolt from 2008 to 2009 as trading and investment banking sprang back to life. Read more...

Banker Jumps Off Roof Committing Suicide

According to the police, Jessica Fashano, 27, an investment banking associate at Citi Global Markets, entered a West Side apartment house that she did not live in, took an elevator to the roof and jumped to her death.

"At 8:13 a.m., the police found her body in an internal courtyard, where she was pronounced dead. The police said they did not suspect foul play. Why Ms. Fashano chose the Riverside Boulevard building is among the many questions surrounding her death. She left no note, and although the police said she was undergoing treatment for depression, friends and associates said she was always in high spirits." More...