After losing 360.5m dinars ($1.2bn) in the final quarter of last year, Global Investment House – one of the largest investment banks in Kuwait – has made 10% of its staff redundant, chopped pay and cancelled bonuses in a bid to cut costs.

Sharp declines in the value of its investments and loan books contributed to Global’s first ever annual loss. As a result, the firm is likely to scale these back and instead focus on raising money through fees from its investment banking, brokerage and asset management business.

The income from these divisions was actually up 69% on the previous year.

“2008 was a year of unprecedented global market turbulence. Global has not been immune to this and we unfortunately reported our first ever loss,” said Maha Al-Ghunaim, chairperson and managing director of the firm.

Since the end of the year, Global has been embarking on a vigorous cost-cutting exercise, and has reduced operating costs by 20%. Sadly, this was through making 10% of the workforce redundant, scaling back salaries for those remaining and eliminating any bonus payouts for 2008.

A source close to the situation tells us that pay cuts range between 5-15%. Not surprisingly, they’ve also enacted a hiring freeze, and, the source tells us, even stopped training employees for the time being.