2024-01-27 11:34:16
By Danièle Guinot
Published on 01/27/2024 at 07:00, Updated on 01/27/2024 at 12:34
The investment banking sector has cut nearly 62,000 jobs globally in 2023. Le Figaro/Adobe Stock
INVESTIGATION – As mergers and acquisitions operations have become rarer over the past two years, the major global investment banks are cutting back on their workforce. Bonuses are also at half mast.
“I was the best performer and I got fired”, summarizes Paul, a bit disappointed. A specialist in corporate mergers and acquisitions, he was, for more than eight years, a senior banker – “managing director” in the sector’s terminology – in Paris in a large Anglo-Saxon investment bank. Last October, he was summoned by his superior who told him that the establishment was going to reduce the size of its activity in Paris, considered to be no longer strategic. “The decision was made in New York. They looked at the organizational charts and cut two out of seven senior manager positions. I was one of them. I was not excpecting that at all”, specifies the forty-year-old. A month later, he left the bank. “I was able to easily negotiate my severance pay because in France, we are protected by labor law, he admits. It’s much less violent than in New York where emails are disconnected within half an hour of the announcement of the dismissal, and in London after a day.”
Express layoffs are legion at the moment in investment banks. The sector, which is very competitive, is used to annual “skimming”: each year, the least efficient are pushed out. But this time it is about real “carts”, in particular…
This article is reserved for subscribers. You have 84% left to discover.
Flash sale
Unlock all items immediately.
Already subscribed? Log in
#investment #bankers #shaken #wave #layoffs