London jobs to go as Citigroup cuts a further 1,800 posts

by Gill Montia

Story link: London jobs to go as Citigroup cuts a further 1,800 posts

Citigroup, the world’s largest bank, has announced further job cuts.

The group is reducing staff numbers in its banking and markets operation by around 1,800 worldwide.

Citigroup spokesman, Adam Castellani, said the bank expects a larger-than-usual number of job cuts in its institutional clients group. This group includes investment banking and trading, plus alternative investments (which provides hedge fund and private equity services).

It is not yet clear how many of the job losses will be from the bank’s London offices, where it employs around 11,500.

Large numbers of employees based at Canary Wharf work in investment banking and trading, so it is reasonable to assume that redundancies could be in the hundreds.

Citigroup has so far written down $18.1 billion in mortgage-related losses and reported a loss of $9.83 billion in the fourth-quarter of 2007. Further writedowns are expected, as are further reductions in staff numbers.

The group employs approximately 320,000 people worldwide and has announced 21,200 job losses in the past year.

In related news, the Centre for Economic Business Research has increased its estimate for the number of job losses in the City related to the credit squeeze to 10,000.