A horrible day for City job losses Thursday, December 04, 2008

Credit SuisseImage via WikipediaToday sees Credit Suisse announce a cull of 11% of their investment banking workforce, which is 5,300 jobs. Nomura have also announced 1,000 job losses following the absorption of Lehman staff. More job losses were also announced by State Street and Jefferies in the US. This follows other layoffs by Goldman, Morgan Stanley and a raft of others.

Whilst unlikely to generate much sympathy amongst the wider public who blame the City for all of the current woes [Reminder - the wider public were the folks borrowing the money when they couldn't really afford it! Like a person getting drunk blaming the barman for their plight, whilst being instructed by the Government to serve drink in greater quantities i.e. do more lending to the less well off], this represent a huge downsizing in the indsutry, perhaps comparable to that which the mining industry went through in the 1980s.

Almost everybody in the City will know someone that has lost their job recently be it friends, colleagues or former colleagues. I sadly know many people in this situation, who are talented and capable people, but who have been hit by indiscriminate layoffs as a result of the scale and urgency surrounding the cuts. There are no obvious comparable roles in other sectors, assuming jobs existed, for many outside of IT whose skills may be more portable. Job insecurity is rife and there is considerable fear evident amongst those with jobs.

It's a frightening situation and may represent a permanent change to the landscape of the City and the wider economy which had come to depend upon the City for wealth creation and tax revenues.

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posted by John Wilson @ 11:19 AM Permanent Link newsvine reddit



1 Comments:

At 10:18 PM, Blogger Neil Good said...

John,

I have been avidly following your blog and greatly value your insight into the world of the City.

One thing I think would be of value is what changes in regulation you would make to somehow preserve some of the more innovative, liberating aspects of the markets whilst curbing some of the excesses. The example I am thinking of is that Iceland went to the wall but Sweden and Norway did not so.....I would simply copy some of the Norwegian regulation as they seemed to get it more right than Iceland did.....

Anyway, over to you!!!

Many thanks,

Neil Good.

 

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