A Record Year for Layoffs in Finance

[OhioChick]

Source: Business Week

October 23, 2007, 12:01AM EST
Wall Street is hacking jobs in huge numbers due to the subprime mortgage crisis and resulting credit crunch. The purge may not be over yet.


It's official. This is the worst year ever for layoffs in the U.S. financial-services industry—and there's still more than two months to go.

As of October, finance companies had announced 130,000 job cuts for the year to date, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. That's more than double the 50,000 cuts announced in 2006 and well ahead of the record 116,000 announced in 2001. Finance firms are reeling from deep losses in subprime mortgages, as well as from risky corporate bonds and loans. "It's the worst year on record for job cuts in the financial-services sector," says John Pedderson, a Challenger, Gray spokesman. While the firm tracks job cuts, it makes no effort to compare them to job creation, or to track total employment for the sector.

Wall Street Slashes Workforce
About 80% of the job cuts have been announced during the last two months, as the depth of the housing recession has become more apparent, according to Pedderson. The cuts have hit mortgage lenders particularly hard, which isn't a surprise. Countrywide Financial (CFC), the largest U.S. mortgage lender, cut jobs in September. The lender, which employed about 56,000 people before the cuts, eliminated up to 12,000 positions. Mortgage lender IndyMac Bancorp (IMB) said in September it would eliminate about 1,000 workers. Accredited Home Lenders Holding said in August it would cut about 1,600 jobs. That same month Capital One (COF) said it would close its Greenpoint mortgage unit, eliminating about 1,900 jobs.

The job cuts have spread well beyond brokers in the subprime mortgage business, though. Senior mergers-and-acquisitions bankers, financiers, and traders are getting the ax, too. On Wall Street, losses stemming from a liquidity crisis (BusinessWeek.com, 9/17/07) are leading to the first major job cuts since 2003. Morgan Stanley (MS) is slicing 300 jobs and Bear Stearns (BSC) 310. HSBC (HBC) is eliminating 750 positions, Credit Suisse (CS) is cutting 170, and UBS (UBS) is eliminating 1,500. Merrill Lynch (MER) is slashing an undisclosed number of jobs from its subprime mortgage unit.






Read more: http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/oct2007/db20071022_581691.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_businessweek+exclusives

[happygoluckytoyou]

1. HAHAHAHAHA... NOW WHO IS WEARING THE BLUE DRESS

hahahaha.... THE REPUBLICANS WHO ARENT REALLY RICH ENUF TO BE CONSERVATIVES ARE LOSING THEIR JOBS...

THEY LAUGHED WHEN CHEAP MANUFACTURING JOBS WENT TO MEXICO
THEY LAUGHED WHEN UNION MANUFACTURING JOBS WENT TO JAPAN
THEY LAUGHED WHEN WHITE COLLAR JOBS CONSOLODATED UNDER THEIR "MANAGED MERGERS"
THEY LAUGHED WHEN TECHNICAL JOBS WENT TO INDIA

........BUT LOOK AT THEM NOW..... THE BANKERS AND TRADERS, THE BUILDERS AND LENDERS...

OUCH!!!! THAT'S GOTTA HURT....

COULD THE "REPUBLICAN LITE" BE CRYING ABOUT THE ECONOMY NOW.... FINALLY REALIZING THAT THE DESTRUCTION OF THE MIDDLE CLASS ACTUALLY INCLUDES --------> THEM

BET THEY THOUGHT THEY WERE ON THE "RICH" SIDE OF THAT EQUATION...... HA HA HA HA HA

CANT WAIT FOR THE....NEXT LEVEL.... OF PEOPLE TO GET THEIR'S AS WELL.... WELCOME TO MY WORLD

[DrFunkenstein]

2. You Are Sadly Mistaken

The people losing their jobs are not the high-powered executives. They are the low-level loan officers and other people on that end of the totem. There is no reason to believe that they vote Republican simply because they techinically work in "finance."

I appreciate your populism, but the rich guys in the business still have their money in the bank. Meanwhile, the pensioners who have their funds tied up in shares of these companies are going to be feeling some real pain.

Maybe a handful of executives got hurt in the downfall, but they are not the ones driving up those unemployment numbers.

[happygoluckytoyou]

3. UNDERSTAND YOUR SENTIMENT BUT---

I'M BETTING IT WILL BE RAINING BANKERS BY THE TIME THIS FINANCIAL TIDE HITS THE BEACH