Royal Bank of Scotland to Cut Significant Percent of Employees

Royal Bank of Scotland

Brokerdealer.com blog update is courtesy of The Economic Times.

The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) with over 700 branches with most mainly in the UK and Ireland have announced massive job cuts to their investment banking division. 

Britain’s state-rescued Royal Bank of Scotland will axe up to 14,000 jobs by 2019 in a retreat from investment banking, the Financial Times reported Wednesday.

The daily business newspaper, which cited people familiar with the matter, said the lender could shed as much as 80 percent of its investment banking division, which employs a total of 18,000 people.

A spokeswoman for RBS, which is about 80-percent state-owned, declined to comment on the press report.

The Edinburgh-based bank had already announced last week that it would end investment banking in the Middle East and Africa and “significantly” reduce its presence in Asia and the United States after posting its seventh successive annual loss.
Losses after tax totalled £3.47 billion ($5.40 billion, 4.74 billion euros) last year after a £4.0-billion writedown on Citizens bank, part of its US operations.

The performance was however much better than in 2013 when RBS had posted an annual net loss of almost £9.0 billion. Stripping out the writedown and other items, RBS recorded an operating profit of £3.5 billion for 2014. 

 

 

Jobs Available: Wall Street Scrambles to Hire Next Gen BrokerDealers

BrokerDealer.com blog post courtesy of extract from July 5 story from The New York Times

nytimes logoA battle is raging on Wall Street as never before, with powerful factions scrambling for control of a precious resource.

On one side are the giant investment banks and broker-dealers, with names like Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. Lined up against them, but also warring among themselves, are the giants of private equity — Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Apollo Global Management and the Blackstone Group, to name just three. And the private-equity firms just happen to be the banks’ clients.

The prize they are fighting for is young talent.

This summer, dozens of junior bankers in their early to mid-20s will start jobs in private equity after spending their first two years out of college working at investment banks. Private-equity firms use billions of dollars of cash and plenty of debt to buy entire companies. They are seen by many young strivers as the next rung on an elite career ladder, promising higher status and more pay — around $300,000 a year, including salary and bonus, roughly double what a second-year banker might earn at Goldman.

But for junior bankers, who are known as analysts, securing such a job means stepping into the middle of a Wall Street struggle that has intensified since the financial crisis.

For the full story, please click here.