Citi signing off up to 6,500 pink slips: Reports

New York, June 24 (PTI) - World's biggest bank Citigroup,
led by India-born Vikram Pandit, is in for an aggressive round
of layoffs, where it will start today firing about 6,500
employees from its investment banking business, media reports
said.

After posting a loss to the tune of 15 billion dollars in
the past two quarters and expected to see further billions of
dollars of subprime crisis-related write-downs, Citigroup
would dismiss this week 10 percent of its 65,000-strong
investment banking workforce across the world, the Wall Street
Journal reported.

Quoting unnamed people familiar with the matter, the
report said that the "pink slips are likely to be handed out
on Monday."

The latest round of layoffs come top off close to 10,000
employees having shown the door earlier this year, as part of
Pandit's aim to cut the company's annual expenses by 15
billion dollars. The company has more than 3,50,000 employees
on its payrolls across the world.

In another report, British daily The Times quoted
unnamed sources as saying that that even senior managing
directors would not be immune from the layoffs.

"Citgroups mergers and acquisitions bankers may bear the
brunt of the cost-cutting because their ranks were not sharply
reduced earlier this year. No major department of the
investment bank is likely to be spared, apart from certain
businesses in emerging markets and its lucrative transactions
services division," the Times report said.

In April, Citigroup said that 9,000 jobs would go on top
of the 21,000 eliminated in the past year.

The Wall Street Journal report said that "no major
department is likely to be spared, aside from some businesses
in emerging markets and Citigroup's lucrative transactions-
services arm."

"Entire trading desks in New York and other cities are
expected to be eliminated. And unlike Citigroup's other recent
reductions, this round will feature layoffs of dozens of
senior managing directors," it quoted the people close to the
matter as saying.

The latest round of job cuts is the first major "move by
John Havens, who took the helm of Citigroup's
institutional-clients group, which includes the investment
bank, in late March."

The report said that, Havens, a longtime lieutenant of
Pandit, has concluded that some of the investment bank's
businesses have been rendered obsolete by the credit crunch,
while he sees others as operating inefficiently and generating
inadequate returns.

The report in U.K. daily The Times further said that
investment banking giant Goldman Sachs is also understood to
have made more jobs cuts at its investment banking division
last week.

"It has been eliminating 10 percent of the roles in
the M&A and corporate fund raising divisions this year, and
the latest round of redundancies began last week," the report
noted.

Recently, Swiss investment banking major Credit Suisse
announced 75 job cuts in its investment bank and support
services division in the U.K. So far in 2008, Credit Suisse
has cut 1,000 investment banking jobs worldwide. PTI