Citigroup will slash its workforce by another 52,000 posts by early 2009 as part of a “dramatic” bid to bolster the firm’s profitability and diving share price.
The redundancies, unveiled yesterday (17 November), will affect around 15% of the banking and financial services group’s staff, Reuters said.
It added that the latest round of cuts is in addition to the 23,000 posts eliminated by the firm between January and September.
Once implemented, the layoffs will leave Citigroup’s global workforce at around 300,000 people – one-fifth smaller than it was at the end of 2007, the news service noted.
The move has been prompted by chief executive Vikram Pandit’s strategy of reducing costs by 20 per cent across the group. He is targeting an overall spend of between $50 million and $52 million next year, compared to $61.9 million over past four quarters.
Citigroup’s latest staff losses will add to the 100,000-plus job cuts already handed out by Wall Street’s biggest banks and brokerages since the start of the financial crisis.
Last week, Morgan Stanley said it would be cutting around ten per cent of its staff across its institutional securities and asset management divisions, the Times reports.
D.C.