A major US investment bank is embarking on a massive cost-cutting drive that will result in the loss of thousands of jobs.
Goldman Sachs employees are waiting to hear whether they will keep their jobs as the US investment bank embarks on a massive cost-cutting drive that could result in thousands of layoffs from its 49,000-strong global workforce.
The long-anticipated job cuts at the Wall Street titan are expected to be the largest since the financial crisis, affecting most of the bank’s major divisions, with its under-fire investment banking arm facing the deepest cuts, a source told Reuters this month.
A little more than 3,000 employees will be let go on January 9, according to an unnamed source.
The cuts began in Asia on Wednesday, where Goldman completed cutting back its private wealth management unit and let go of 11 private bank staff in its Hong Kong and Singapore offices, a source with knowledge of the matter said.
About eight staff were also laid off in Goldman’s research department in Hong Kong, the source added, with layoffs ongoing in the investment bank and other divisions.
Goldman’s redundancy plans will be followed by a broader spending review taking in corporate travel and expenses, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday, as it counts the costs of a huge slowdown in corporate dealmaking and a slump in capital markets activity since the war in Ukraine.
Goldman Sachs declined to comment.
Goldman had 49,100 employees at the end of the third quarter in 2022, after adding significant numbers of staff during the coronavirus pandemic.
The lender is also slashing its annual bonus payments this year to reflect the depressed market conditions, with payouts expected to fall by about 40 percent.
Global investment banking fees nearly halved in 2022, with $77bn earned by the banks, down from $132.3bn one year earlier, Dealogic data showed.
Banks struck $517bn worth of equity capital markets (ECM) transactions by late December 2022, the lowest level since the early 2000s and a 66 percent drop from 2021’s bonanza, according to Dealogic.