Citigroup to eliminate more than 50,000 jobs

Bloomberg

Chief Executive Officer Vikram Pandit already reduced headcount this year by 23,000 through job cuts and the sale of business units, leaving the New York based bank with 352,000 employees as of Sept. 30. The company plans to winnow that down to about 300,000 in the "near term," according to a presentation on the firm's Web site.

The company aims to lower annual expenses to about $50 billion in 2009, according to the presentation. Expenses in the past four quarters totaled $62 billion.

Citigroup slumped 19 percent in New York trading last week and is down 68 percent this year, after four straight quarterly losses totaling $20 billion.

Banks and brokerages worldwide have shed almost 160,000 jobs since the subprime mortgage market collapsed last year, sparking a credit crisis.

Meanwhile, Bank of America, the bank that's buying Merrill Lynch, plans to double its stake in China Construction Bank Corp. to about 19.1 percent.

Bank of America will exercise its option to buy shares in China Construction from China SAFE Investments Limited, the Charlotte, North Carolina-based company said yesterday in a statement. The U.S. bank said it expects the transaction to be completed by the end of this month.The purchase ends speculation that Bank of America might sell part of its stake to raise as much as $10 billion to blunt effects of the global financial crisis. The bank in May paid HK$14.5 billion ($1.87 billion) to buy 6 billion shares from China Construction, raising its ownership to 10.8 percent. China's third-largest bank by market value said last month that third-quarter profit rose 12 percent on higher interest income.