Christmas is coming. Jamie Dimon has been sending out his special Christmas card. Financial services have been holding muted Christmas parties in an effort to put the notorious parties of the past behind them. And banks have been making layoffs. Because December is not only a time of comfort and joy: it’s also the end of the financial year and costs need to be cut in preparation for financial rebirth in the first quarter of 2014.
Most of the redundancies banks have made recently have gone unreported. In layoffs past, banking cuts were subject to considerable fanfare, but since cost cutting as become a way of life, the continuous slow drip of disconsolate finance professionals is less newsworthy than it used to be. Not that this is likely to be any consolation to the 200 people who’ve disappeared from top banks without jobs to go since November according to the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) Register.
In almost every case, redundancy at this time of year results in the loss of an almost entire annual bonus, due to be paid in early 2014.
Credit Suisse has been chopping emerging markets staff
The worst culprit when it comes to pre-Christmas trimming is Credit Suisse. Since the start of November, the FCA Register suggests that 40 people have left the Swiss bank in London without immediate new jobs to go to. Most left in November, but a few left in early December. Some may have departed of their own accord (although this seems unlikely so close to bonus time), others may have shifted to new jobs overseas and outside the FCA’s jurisdiction. Many will have fallen foul of Credit Suisse’s plan to cut CHF4.4bn from its costs by 2015.
A lot of Credit Suisse’s exits have come from its emerging markets (EM) business, where traders Paul Timmons, Arif Hussein, Brent David and Marc Sabella, have all been let go, along with the likes of Vincenzo Zinni, head of emerging markets and local sales and Hakan Kuyumcuoglu, a director on the emerging markets and FX desk.
However, the cuts at CS haven’t been restricted to EM desks. The Swiss bank has parted company with Andrew Kasoulis, a food retail analyst who’s been with the bank for nearly 20 years and is off to work for Morrisons (possibly of his own accord).
Alfonso Figar, an equity derivatives professional, Cosimo Leone a fixed income derivatives salesman, and Edward Mizuhara, a director in public debt syndicate also appear to have gone (possibly of their own accord too).
Credit Suisse declined to comment.
Pre-Christmas cuts at BNP Paribas, Barclays, Nomura and Bank of America Merrill Lynch
Behind Credit Suisse, the other pre-Christmas cutters include: BNP Paribas (28 people have disappeared from its London business without a job to go to since November), Nomura International (22 gone), Barclays’ investment bank (20 gone), and Merrill Lynch International (20 gone).
However, the sad reality is that all banks are dumping staff before Christmas and before bonus time. Some of the safest (although not entirely safe) places to be at this time of year look like Goldman Sachs International and SocGen, which have only let go of 10 and 9 people respectively since the start of November. As we noted last February, Goldman Sachs is surprisingly honourable when it comes to making staff redundant – it tends to pay bonuses first and then let people go, which is far better than being dumped with a meagre pay-off just before Christmas.