Lunchtime Links: Unfortunately, revenues now seem to be falling faster than headcount; the headhunter whose home was burned down in the riots

Reuters makes an interesting and depressing point today: as fast as investment banks cut headcount, their revenues are falling even faster.

It takes BarCap as an example. Bob Diamond is cutting 6% of jobs. And yet BarCap's revenues were down 12% quarter-on-quarter in Q2 and Morgan Stanley analysts are predicting a 10% BarCap revenue reduction over the whole year.

Equally, Reuters points out that Credit Suisse is cutting up to 7% of jobs in its investment bank, but Morgan Stanley is predicting a 14% year on year drop in Credit Suisse's annual revenues.

Nor is there much respite in sight. With advisory and capital markets revenues, which held up in the first two quarters, not looking very healthy at all during July, it appears likely that third quarter revenues will turn out even worse than the preceding months'. This being the case, it also seems fair to assume that there will be a lot more redundancies come October.

Separately, our commiserations go to Emma Foley, a buyside headhunter specialising in sales and marketing roles at Weber Chase, whose Clapham flat and belongings were completely destroyed by fire during the riots on Monday.

George Magnus at UBS does not think there will be another banking crisis. (Bloomberg)

Marc Faber: "Bankers must be punished. The banking sector has become too big, compared with the real economy." (Opalesque)

SocGen has asked for a probe into yesterday's fall in its share price. (Bloomberg)

New rumour: Asian banks commence cutting credit lines to French banks, sparking self-fulfilling prophecies. (ZeroHedge)

"On the back of the fall of French banks we just want to highlight that we feel comfortable with our outperform rating on BNP Paribas as our favourite name in the French market," said Credit Suisse analyst Maxence Le Gouvello. (Financial Times)

The investment banking divisions of three of the UK's largest banks make the lowest payments to staff as a proportion of the income they generate of any investment banks in Europe. (Telegraph)

Bank lay-offs have set off a labour-capital death spiral: they are bad for employees but are proving even worse for shareholders, and the declines in the share prices of banks are putting yet more pressure on employees and will probably lead to more lay-offs. (Financial Times)

Although salaries at Swiss commodities trading houses are paid in Swiss Francs, bonuses are paid in US dollars, and this is becoming a problem. (Financial Times)

Citibank will raise headcount at its Asian prime finance unit by a fifth to 80 this year. (Reuters)

Lloyd Blankfein has lost about $52m of his personal wealth this month -- more than the combined losses of four other Wall Street CEOs. (Bloomberg)

How Blackberry BBM fed the riots. (Techcrunch)

For fifth straight year, the median starting salary for US journalists just out of school is $30k. (Poynter)