More Lay-offs on the Horizon on Wall Street
Wall Street employees at Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers and JPMorgan Chase are set to weather another wave of layoffs.
According to a CNBC report, Morgan Stanley is planning another round of layoffs in the coming days, finalizing a plan to slash another 5 percent from its securities-firm workforce, or 1,500 employees. Lehman will announce another round of cuts in addition to those already begun as early as next week.
The cuts will take place across all business units, according to people familiar with the issue at Morgan. Brokers who make money largely on a commission basis and usually leave on their own when markets drop or business slumps will be excluded from the cuts. Morgan Stanley has 46,000 employees, including 8,000 brokers.
"We are constantly evaluating business conditions to ensure we are right-sized and we continue to do that," a Morgan Stanley spokesperson said when asked for comment. A Lehman spokeswoman declined to comment.
The cutbacks reflect the souring business environment on Wall Street. Morgan Stanley has already announced a $9 billion write-down stemming from a wrong-way bet on the mortgage-bond market, and has announced losses due to the bad trades.
People inside Morgan say CEO John Mack believes the 5 percent cut, which will begin any day now and continue through the end of June, may be the last round of job cuts at the company this year, which has already announced job reductions of 5 percent, or around 2,800 employees.
Elsewhere on Wall Street, JPMorgan Chase is cutting its own staff to make room for incoming Bear Stearns
executives it's hired as part of its purchase of that firm. According to one senior executive at JPMorgan, the firm also wants to "right size" the business.
JPMorgan is expected to cut more than half of Bear Stearns' 14,000 former employees, though CNBC has learned that JPMorgan has already offered jobs to around 4,000 former Bear workers. Senior people inside JPMorgan say the firm has no hard figure for the size of the layoffs.
Meanwhile, CNBC has learned that Lehman Brothers next week also is expected to add to the 4,900 layoffs it has already announced.
Source: Source: CNBC | Published on May 6, 2008
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