Citigroup cuts hundreds of jobs, including in investment banking and mortgage units
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The cuts amount to less than 1 per cent of Citigroup’s 240,000-strong workforce.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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NEW YORK – Citigroup is cutting hundreds of jobs across the company, with the Wall Street giant’s investment banking division among those affected.
The cuts amount to less than 1 per cent of Citigroup’s 240,000-strong workforce, according to people familiar with the matter. Employees across the firm’s operations and technology organisation and United States mortgage-underwriting arm are also among those affected.
The routine cuts are part of Citigroup’s normal business planning, the sources said. There has been no broad mandate for managers to cut employees; instead, various divisions have been grappling with different reasons for the cuts.
A spokesman for Citigroup declined to comment.
The move comes just weeks after rival JPMorgan Chase cut hundreds of mortgage staff. Goldman Sachs, for its part, embarked on one of its biggest rounds of job cuts in January when it planned to eliminate thousands of positions across the company.
In the tech division, Citigroup has spent billions in recent years upgrading its underlying infrastructure. Chief executive officer Jane Fraser has long said these investments will ultimately allow the bank to reduce its reliance on manual processes.
“As our investments in transformation and control initiatives mature, we expect to realise efficiency as those programmes transition from manually intensive processes to technology-enabled ones,” Ms Fraser said in January.
In investment banking, on the other hand, the firm is grappling with an industrywide slowdown in deals. The dearth of activity sparked a 53 per cent drop in revenue from the business in 2022 and analysts are expecting additional declines in the first quarter.
Citigroup’s recent moves in its mortgage division come after the bank already dismissed dozens of workers in 2022 .
“We are actively hiring to execute against our strategy, but we are also re-pacing where that makes sense in the light of the environment that we are in,” Citigroup chief financial officer Mark Mason said in January. “We are constantly combing talent and making sure we have got the right people in the right roles, and where necessary to restructure, we do that as well.” BLOOMBERG
