Citigroup is the latest bank due to hand out huge bonuses worth more than £5.6 bn to its investment bankers today, despite writing off huge losses.
Reported by The Daily Telegraph, the figure is roughly the same as last year and comes as the industry braces itself for more job cuts, with rumours that Citibank itself is planning to announce 10,000 redundancies in March – on top of the 21,400 axed in the past 12 months.
According to the paper, key performers will be rewarded, with a “strong message sent to those who haven’t pulled their weight”.
Citibank, which posted a $9.83bn loss in the fourth-quarter, follows Merrill Lynch in rubber stamping huge bonuses despite taking billions of dollars of writedowns on its sub-prime mortgage positions, and the amounts being flat to marginally down. According to Bloomberg, Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley paid out $65.6bn in bonuses and compensation last year.
Redundancies also look set to take place. Credit Suisse cut 150 jobs in its securities unit on Monday, taking its total headcount reduction to 470 so far, added the paper.
Deutsche Bank, which axed 300 jobs in the sales and trading division last week, is today expected to cut up to 30 jobs from its corporate finance arm. Lloyds TSB revealed plans yesterday to remove 280 from the HR division, said the paper.
