Barclays PLC has this week cut several hundred jobs in its investment bank as part of its plan to shrink the business by 7,000 staff over the next three years to save costs, people familiar with the matter said.
The cuts are mostly to be in the fixed income, currencies and commodities (FICC) trading and markets businesses, rather than in advisory and equities. FICC is the area that Barclays and several other banks such as UBS AG are scaling back due to falling revenues and tougher regulations.
Asia, Europe, US cuts
The precise number of job losses was not known, but there are to be cuts in Asia, Europe and the US, the sources said.
The latest cuts add to more than 400 already made by the British bank in its investment bank this year.
Last month, Barclays chief executive Antony Jenkins reined in the bank’s ambitions to be a Wall Street powerhouse and said he would cut about one in four jobs in the division, as part of a plan to cut 19,000 jobs across the bank.
“As stated on May 8, at the time of our strategy update, Barclays plans to reduce the headcount of its investment bank by approximately 7,000 over the course of three years,” a spokesman for Barclays said.
“These reductions are in line with our commitment to a higher-returning investment bank with an origination-led banking strategy and a markets business focused on standardized, liquid products,” the spokesman added.
COST-CUTTING
Jenkins is trying to cut costs and improve profitability at the bank.
Trading revenues in FICC, in particular interest rate trading, have slumped in the past year amid a low interest rate environment in which banks have to hold more capital against the business, driving down returns.
Shareholders were also angered when Barclays raised bonuses for investment bank staff last year, despite a fall in profits.
ADVANCED: Previously, Taiwanese chip companies were restricted from building overseas fabs with technology less than two generations behind domestic factories Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp, would no longer be restricted from investing in next-generation 2-nanometer chip production in the US, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. However, the ministry added that the world’s biggest contract chipmaker would not be making any reckless decisions, given the weight of its up to US$30 billion investment. To safeguard Taiwan’s chip technology advantages, the government has barred local chipmakers from making chips using more advanced technologies at their overseas factories, in China particularly. Chipmakers were previously only allowed to produce chips using less advanced technologies, specifically
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
TARIFF SURGE: The strong performance could be attributed to the growing artificial intelligence device market and mass orders ahead of potential US tariffs, analysts said The combined revenue of companies listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange and the Taipei Exchange for the whole of last year totaled NT$44.66 trillion (US$1.35 trillion), up 12.8 percent year-on-year and hit a record high, data compiled by investment consulting firm CMoney showed on Saturday. The result came after listed firms reported a 23.92 percent annual increase in combined revenue for last month at NT$4.1 trillion, the second-highest for the month of December on record, and posted a 15.63 percent rise in combined revenue for the December quarter at NT$12.25 billion, the highest quarterly figure ever, the data showed. Analysts attributed the
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) quarterly sales topped estimates, reinforcing investor hopes that the torrid pace of artificial intelligence (AI) hardware spending would extend into this year. The go-to chipmaker for Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc reported a 39 percent rise in December-quarter revenue to NT$868.5 billion (US$26.35 billion), based on calculations from monthly disclosures. That compared with an average estimate of NT$854.7 billion. The strong showing from Taiwan’s largest company bolsters expectations that big tech companies from Alphabet Inc to Microsoft Corp would continue to build and upgrade datacenters at a rapid clip to propel AI development. Growth accelerated for
RSS