Are things beginning to look up at State Street?

After paying back government bailout money, State Street posted a second quarter loss of $3,3bn, so it'd be optimistic to suggest that it's about to start bolstering its Irish team again. However, some signs point to the fact that things are getting slightly better for the company.

In December last year, State Street announced it was making 1,800 redundancies globally, 250 of which a believed to have affected its Irish operations (though the firm has yet to confirm this). It's one of the biggest employers in the IFSC, with over 2,000 staff, so all eyes were on just how bad Q2 was likely to be for the firm.

State Street paid $2bn to the US Treasury's Troubled Asset Relief Programme (TARP), making it the first firm to exit the scheme, and which contributed heavily to the loss. However, RBC Capital Markets analyst Gerard Cassidy said the "trends are going in the direction you need for this company".

The amount State Street has spent employees in Q2 is vastly down year-on-year, though - $696m, compared to $1.06bn in 2008, or a decline of 34%. The firm puts this down to reduced bonus payouts rather than smaller headcount.

At the moment, the firm has a few vacancies in Ireland, for fund accountants, though these are on an interim basis, as well NAV officers and client relationship managers. They pale in comparison to its recruitment drive over the past couple of years.

State Street's chairman and chief executive officer Ronald E. Logue's comments about its "continued focus on expense control" hardly inspire confidence that a recruitment spree is on the cards, nor does the fact that assets under administration are down by 17% year-on-year.

However, William Slattery, head the firms Irish operations, offered a (slight) reason for optimism recently, when he suggested that internationally traded firms such as State Street were "possibly the only businesses who might be hiring at the moment".

Logue also said State Street had "one of the strongest capital positions in our industry" and he'd like to acquire asset servicing businesses outside the US.