US
Goldman Done with Redundancies?
Apr 14 2009
During this week's Goldman Sachs conference call, CFO David Viniar said the bank is now "sized appropriately for where the business is."
Unless something very nasty happens, this seems to imply that layoffs at Goldman are now passé.
If so, Goldman bankers have had it easy. At 27,898, headcount at Goldman is down only 12.4% from its Q108 peak. It's also up 24% on 2005.
Compare that to the 30 percent of jobs Merrill Lynch and Bank of America are said to be cutting in London, and Goldman bankers look even more fortunate.
In the unlikely event that there are more cuts to come, maybe they'll in equities, where Viniar said volumes are "massively off" in Europe, or in M&A where he's not predicting a recovery anytime soon. More promisingly, ECM activity has apparently picked up considerably in the past week.
