Macquarie has cut its workforce by more than 700 over the past six months, mainly in the back office

Macquarie Group’s headcount fell by 739 in the six months to 30 September, according to its half-year results, with back-office staff bearing the brunt of the reductions. The bank’s results show that employment expenses decreased 5 per cent during that period, mainly because of a 16 per cent reduction in its central-support workforce – now 5,088-strong – over the last year.

“Most of the cuts have been across the back office and the majority of these from IT teams within broking and investment banking, as well as equities trading, and recently more cuts in private wealth,” says a Sydney recruiter who asked not to be named.

In recent years Macquarie has also trimmed front-office roles in investment banking, trading, securities, and fixed income, currencies and commodities. The loss of these employees has helped to shrink the the back office.

“Once you lose the dealmakers and traders, you have less requirement for the army of support and back- and middle-office staff,” says Michael Cunningham, partner Anton Murray Consulting. “Add to this the strength of the dollar, and the high salaries in Australia versus offshoring to lower-cost locations such as Singapore, China, Philippines, India or Malaysia, and it goes some way to explaining the recent 739 cuts.”

It will be challenging for support people to find similar roles because many other investment banks are making lay-offs in the same product areas, says Cunningham. “The good news is that redundancy doesn’t carry the same stigma anymore; cutbacks are driven by market conditions not employee performance.”

Further front-office cuts aren’t yet on the cards. “Most of the junior and mid-level talent in advisory has left the firm already, and the senior employees who remain are pretty loyal to the brand, or have too much to lose by moving,” says another executive recruiter.

Macquarie’s headcount is now 13,463, down from 15,556 a year ago.