Wall Street banks have been cutting thousands of jobs and potentially may cut more. Banks such as Morgan Stanley, Goldmach Sachs, and Bank of America are all participating. These cuts, however, are a normal part of Wall Street, and generally are not attributed to market conditions.
Wall Street to Cut Jobs
While there certainly is uncertainty in the future of the US economy, these layoffs are not a surprise. Every year around this time Wall Street will cut some under performers. This year, however, there are high hopes of many companies going public amongst the new Trump administration. This process may be slowed due to the job cuts amongst these large banks.
Morgan Stanley, for example, is planning to cut about 2,000 individuals by the end of the first quarter. These job cuts generally won’t be coming from a particular sector or business unit. Instead, the cuts will be somewhat evenly distributed. However, the 15,000 financial advisers likely won’t be impacted by the job cuts.
An anonymous representative of Morgan Stanley said that these moves are just part of business strategy and efficiency. That individual said “It’s really about operational efficiency, it doesn’t relate to market conditions.” A representative from Goldman Sachs had the same mindset. They said “like other banks, this is part of our normal, annual talent management process.”
Bank of America is set to cut 150 junior investment bankers, and also is planning on cutting about 1% of their staff. JPMorgan Chase is the country’s largest bank, but has not publicly released how many jobs they are expecting on cutting. CFO Jeremy Barnum said “we have grown a lot… You have to believe, all else equal, that some amount of inefficiency has been introduced.” It seems that the potential idea of inefficiency is enough to get upper level management to make changes for the better.
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