Citi, Goldman to fire staff

Bloomberg

Goldman, which converted last month from the biggest U.S. securities firm into a commercial bank, Wednesday began telling about 3,200 employees, or 10 percent of its workforce, they were out of a job, according to one of the people who declined to be identified.

Citigroup has been notifying staff this week who are affected by the bank's plan to discard 9,100 positions over the next 12 months, or about 2.6 percent of its headcount, another person said. 

The ousted workers add to the swelling ranks of Wall Street's unemployed, their lives upended by the credit crisis. Both New York-based firms have already cut staff, and are among the banks and brokerages worldwide that have shed almost 150,000 jobs since the subprime mortgage market collapsed last year.

Led by Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman said in April it would fire more after culling about 1,500 underperformers. Vikram Pandit, Citigroup's CEO, shed 12,900 over the past year.

“We haven't hit bottom yet,” said Henry Higdon, managing partner at Higdon Partners, a New York-based search firm specializing in financial services. “They have to adjust the size of their businesses to the realities, not only today, but what it's going to look like in the next two or three years.”

Goldman, which employed 32,569 people as of Aug. 29, may report its first quarterly loss next month since the company went public in 1999.