All this morning's bad news on job cuts, hiring freezes, and quarterly declines, consolidated
RBS is cutting jobs. Morgan Stanley's officially got a hiring freeze on. Revenues from sales and trading are predicted to fall 35% in the third quarter. And if this happens again in the fourth quarter there will be 'fairly significant [job] cuts.'
It's not a good morning.
More on RBS
Like BarCap, RBS is removing staff from the back office. This is possibly because so many front office staff have left voluntarily in recent years.
500 people are being trimmed. According to the Herald, most of them will "be in London," and it's all part of an "ongoing efficiency programme."
More on Morgan Stanley
Separately, it has become apparent that Morgan Stanley won't be hiring anyone else in its investment bank until the end of this year.
Bloomberg points out that MS has hired about 400 salespeople and traders since June.
Ruminations on risky jobs
In the event of a continued slowdown and subsequent further redundancies in the fourth quarter, mid-ranking people at senior associate and VP level may be most at risk.
Linda Jackson, City director at Fairplace (an outplacement firm), says the average age of their redundant City clients is 35.
The problem is that VPs are expensive and they don't have powerful sponsors. "It's partly a volume thing - there are simply more people at that level," says Jackson. "But it's also the fact that they don't have a real power base within the organisation."
