Layoffs Watch 2016: If You Work At A Bank, Gird Your Loins
According to the Financial Times, Barclays and BNP Paribas will lead the way with big cuts, the news of which they'll put out there in the next few months. So, mark your calendars.
At Barclays, the axe will fall on March 1 when chief executive Jes Staley unveils a fresh strategy with the bank’s annual results. The announcement will include Barclays’ plans to move more quickly to shrink its investment bank, which employs about 20,000 people...BNP Paribas’s new corporate and institutional banking chief Yann Gérardin will announce a new cost cutting plan in February.
But it's not the Brits and the French who get to have all the fun. Stateside investment banks will reportedly be doing some house cleaning of their own.
Analysts believe 2016’s misery could be more widespread than just those two banks. New regulations mean all banks must hold more equity, and that means they have to earn higher profits to keep return on equity at the levels investors demand. “I don’t think we can rule out the end of job cuts until RoEs recover to acceptable levels,” said Jon Peace, London-based banks analyst at Nomura...Mike Mayo, New York-based banking analyst at CLSA, said that even though US banks announced fewer cuts than European lenders this year, their employees are still at risk in 2016.
Thousands more bank jobs under threat [FT]
Experts think jobs on Wall Street will take a plunge [NYP]