LayoffBlog.com

Swiss bank UBS AG, which suffered massive client withdrawals after a high-profile U.S. tax fraud probe, has cut around 200 jobs at its U.S. wealth management arm, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Source: Reuters

China’s state-owned enterprises may unilaterally terminate commodities contracts as they try to cut massive losses from financial derivatives, an industry source told Caijing on August 28.

According to the source, China’s State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) has sent notice to six foreign financial institutions informing them that several state-owned enterprise will reserve the right to default on commodities contracts signed with those institutions.

Most investment banks may “just swallow” any losses arising from canceled contracts, the executive said, adding that any losses are usually made up for with compensating trades.

Source: Caijing.com.cn

Bank of America Corp. has notified the Florida Agency for Workforce Innovation that it plans to lay off 50 employees at its Fort Lauderdale claims and recovery office. Employees have been notified that the layoffs will start Oct. 25.

Source: Charlotte BusinessJournal

Wells Fargo is closing a mortgage processing center in North Carolina, eliminating 62 jobs at an office in Durham.

Source: MyFox8

~News submitted by upthecreek

State regulators shut down seven regional banks Friday, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation said, bringing the total number of banks to fail in the United States to 64 this year. [..] Friday’s seven closures will cost the FDIC fund $812.6 million, bringing the total cost for failed banks to $14.21 billion this year.

Source: CNNMoney

The composite second-quarter earnings for companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index are expected to drop 31% from a year earlier, compared with a decline of 35% predicted last week.
Declines are expected in nine of the 10 sectors in the S&P 500 Index from a year earlier. The health-care sector is the only one expecting an increase in earnings, of 2%.

Source: WSJ

Credit card issuer Advanta Corp. on Friday said it’s laying off half its work force. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Advanta said the company will have less than 200 employees after the layoffs.

Source: CNBC, AP

~News submitted by upthecreek

The U.S. Justice Department arrested a former Goldman Sachs Inc. (GS) employee and charged him with stealing computer codes related to the firm’s high-speed trading platform.

Sergey Aleynikov, a naturalized U.S. citizen who emigrated from Russia, allegedly unlawfully copied, duplicated, downloaded and transferred computer codes from a New York-based financial institution. His salary at the time of his employment termination was about $400,000 a year.

Source: WSJ

(Update): “An error by the New York Stock Exchange caused Goldman Sachs Inc. (GS) to be left out of the exchange’s weekly program trading data last week. ”

Source: WSJ

U.S. regulators closed four small banks on Friday: Community Bank of West Georgia;
Neighborhood Community Bank, of Newnan, Georgia; Horizon Bank, of Pine City, Minnesota; MetroPacific Bank, of Irvine, California, bringing the total of U.S. bank failures to 44 this year.

Source: Reuters

NCR Corp., the world’s leading provider of ATMs, announced Tuesday it is relocating its corporate headquarters to Georgia, bringing more than 2,000 jobs to the state over the next five years.

Source: Forbes, AP

Morgan Stanley, the sixth-biggest U.S. bank by assets, will increase some executive salaries and double Chief Financial Officer Colm Kelleher’s pay as bonuses come under scrutiny from the Obama administration and lawmakers.

Source: Bloomberg

American Express Co, the credit card and travel services company, on Monday said it plans to eliminate 4,000 jobs, or 6 percent of its workforce, as the weakened economy causes higher customer defaults.

Source: Reuters

Barclays has announced fresh tech job cuts that could see up to 350 permanent IT posts axed. Job losses will take place in the Global Retail and Commercial Banking (GRCB) Technology department this year. Jobs are expected to go from Barclays centres at London, Northampton, Poole and Radbroke, UK.

Source: ZDNet-UK

Wells Fargo & Co. is laying off 548 workers in Charlotte, the bank said in a notice filed with the North Carolina Department of Commerce.

Source: Triangle Business Journal

According to Dow Jones, Morning Star: “Singapore Minister for Manpower Gan Kim Yong Wednesday said that layoffs during the first quarter of 2009 is likely to have crossed 10, 000.”

~News submitted by upthecreek

Lloyds Banking Group, the part-nationalised financial services giant, has confirmed plans to cut almost 1,000 UK jobs at its motor finance division as it moves to save costs by combining sales forces.

The bank, formed out of the merger of Lloyds TSB and HBOS last year, will cut 985 full and part-time jobs over the next two years.

Source: Times Online

According to Reuters, CNBC: “Discover Financial Services, the fourth-largest U.S. credit card network, will cut 500 jobs, or 4 percent if its workforce, in May, hurt by mounting credit losses, the company said on Tuesday.”

~News submitted by upthecreek

Swiss bank UBS will announce more job cuts soon, with staff in Switzerland and departments like marketing to be hit hard, newspapers reported on Sunday.

Citing several unnamed sources, the Sonntagszeitung newspaper said managers had already started telling their staff about job losses, with departments like marketing and support functions hardest hit.

Source: Reuters

The Royal Bank of Scotland said on Tuesday it might cut as many as 9,000 jobs worldwide as the troubled British bank, which is majority-owned by the government, seeks to reduce costs and repay government funds.

The job cuts would affect back office operations and would come in addition to the 2,700 already announced in Britain for this year. The bank said the actual number of layoffs would be lower than 9,000 because “natural turnover” and “less use of agency staff” would further help to limit redundancies. In addition, the bank said it already identified 650 new job opportunities in Britain.

Source: The New York Times

Wells Fargo & Co., one of the largest U.S. lenders, told employees this month that it’s considering cutting foreign workers, citing political pressure stemming from the government’s bailout of the banking industry.

When the stimulus bill became law in February, it included rules that made it more difficult for TARP recipients to hire foreign workers on so-called H-1B visas.

The legislation doesn’t apply to current employees of Wells and other TARP recipients who need to have their existing H-1B visas renewed. However, Wells Fargo is letting those visas expire anyway.

12 biggest banks that took TARP money requested visas for more than 21,800 foreign workers in the past six years, according to the Associated Press.

Source: MarketWatch

~News submitted by upthecreek