I think these people are much more concern for political posturing if the school class is 18 or 25 students (they would remain far behind Asian/European educational standards anyway ) than Y2K problem, besides who would even care untill late in present enviroment....
Jobs axe now expected
to swing on Wall St
By Sheryle Bagwell, London
With major European banks already beginning to take the axe to jobs, attention will switch to the big Wall Street firms this week where the blood is now expected to flow.
America's biggest securities firm, Merrill Lynch, is expected to announce tomorrow that it is cutting more than 3,000 jobs, or about 5 per cent of its global workforce.
The job losses are expected to be confirmed when the firm unveils its quarterly results, which are likely to show a slump in profits as a result of its exposure to Russia and other emerging markets, as well as to the stricken hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management. Merrill Lynch led the $US3.6 billion ($5.8 billion) bail-out of LTCM last month by a consortium of 14 major banks from across the US and Europe.
Reports say the bulk of the jobs losses are likely to be in Merrill's fixed-interest operations, emerging markets divisions and in the back office, rather than in equities and mergers and acquisitions.
If confirmed, the retrenchments at Merrill Lynch will be the largest cull in financial markets since the emerging markets turmoil began to hit the global banking industry.
Last month, the large Dutch-owned banking group ING announced that it would slash 1,200 jobs from its operations worldwide, with its emerging markets operations taking the brunt of the losses. Cuts are also said to be in the pipeline at Bankers Trust, and at the big Swiss banks UBS and the Credit Suisse Group.
UBS has already lost its chairman and three risk-management executives as a result of its ill-fated foray into LTCM. Morale is particularly low at Credit Suisse's investment banking division, Credit Suisse First Boston, which has suffered large losses in Russia and Asia.
The wave of job losses comes on top of a huge cull at the newly merged Citigroup, which brought together Citicorp and the Travelers Group in a deal finalised on Thursday.
London's The Independent newspaper suggested over the weekend that the retrenchment total could hit 8,000, following an additional announcement last week from the merged group warning that earnings would fall drastically in the third quarter because of trading losses in global bond markets and emerging markets.
And the desperate moves by the banks to stem losses by sacking staff may not end there.
UBS was forced to deny reports last week that it intended to sell its investment banking unit, Warburg Dillon Read. But some observers say it is only a matter of time before the present crisis triggers a major shake-out in the global banking sector that may see some banks disappear or go under.
"There are just too many banks," Mr Fraser Coutts, of the London-based Centre for Economics and Business Research, said last week.
"It can't go on with too many banks chasing too little business."
afr.com.au |
