No layoffs at Goldman Sachs? Loads of layoffs at Bank of America?

Which is the safest bank in London to work for now? If recent changes to the Financial Services Authority (FSA) register are anything to by, it’s Goldman Sachs. Which is the least safe bank? By the same measure, it looks like Bank of America.

In the past two and a half weeks, Goldman Sachs has lost none of its FSA registered people in London. Over the same period, Bank of America has lost 31.

It’s not clear that the Bank of America exits are redundancies: some of them may have been entirely voluntary departures. For the moment, however, it seems that few of the people who’ve departed Bank of America have found new jobs elsewhere.

Bank of America didn't return a call for comment on its staff exits. The bank is in the process of implementing 'Project New Bac', a cost cutting programme involving thousands of redundancies. 30,000 jobs are expected to go in total, across the bank.

Among the people who’ve left Bank of America in the past few weeks are Richard Adrian-Smith, an analyst who joined in September 2012, Modassir Ali, a trader, and Lionel Fournier, head of equity derivatives and hybrid structuring in EMEA. According to the FSA register, none have moved into new positions yet - although it's possible they have voluntarily with new jobs lined up.

If Goldman Sachs isn't firing, it doesn't appear to be hiring either. In the past two weeks, it's added only two people in London. One of them -  Christian Barz - appears to have transferred from Goldman in Germany. The other -  Piotr Krupa - came from equity fund Trinity Street Asset Management.