Citigroup Inc is carrying out a management shake-up, and JPMorgan Chase & Co announced job cuts at its investment banking division as the US banks seek to weather three months of turmoil on global credit markets.
Citigroup, the largest US bank, announced late on Thursday that it would merge its investment banking business into its alternative investments division and named former Morgan Stanley executive Vikram Pandit to lead it.
The announcement came after it said last week that its third-quarter earnings fell 60 percent on repercussions from the subprime mortgage crisis.
The bank plans to report its third-quarter results on Monday.
Michael Klein, chairman and CEO of the investment banking unit, will jointly run that business with James Forese, a 22-year veteran of Citigroup who has led the global equities division for the last four years, the company said on Thursday.
"This new operating structure will enable us to continue to use our capital actively but in a more efficient way, keep moving towards higher margin businesses, continue to diversify our sources of business, and employ world class talent that has a relentless focus on serving our clients," Citigroup chairman and CEO Charles Prince said in a written statement.
Pandit, 50, is seen as a potential crown prince to replace Prince. Pandit received his promotion as Thomas Maheras, head of capital markets and trading who had also been seen as a possible Prince successor and was highly respected in the company, is departing Citigroup.
Meanwhile, a JPMorgan spokesman said on Thursday that the third-largest US bank was cutting jobs in its units that financed leveraged buyouts and packaged debt into securities, groups where JPMorgan expects less income.
The spokesman would not say how many jobs are to get the axe, but people familiar with the cuts said they should account for less than 10 percent of the positions in those departments.
The announcements by the two banks followed firings of top officers and job cuts at other banks amid the credit crisis sparked by losses linked to high-risk home loans in the US.
Pandit left Morgan Stanley to start his own hedge fund, Old Lane, in 2005.
He came under the Citigroup fold when the bank bought the fund a year later for US$800 million.
The shake-up at Citigroup came as the bank lost more than US$3 billion on drops in the value of mortgages and leveraged buyout loans, credit-trading losses and costs to write off bad debt.
Prince, one of the top earners on Wall Street, also has been under pressure from shareholders unsatisfied with the bank's financial results.
The bank has seen its share price fall 13 percent this year, substantially more than its rivals. JPMorgan, for instance, has seen a 3.4-percent decline.
‘TAIWAN-FRIENDLY’: The last time the Web site fact sheet removed the lines on the US not supporting Taiwanese independence was during the Biden administration in 2022 The US Department of State has removed a statement on its Web site that it does not support Taiwanese independence, among changes that the Taiwanese government praised yesterday as supporting Taiwan. The Taiwan-US relations fact sheet, produced by the department’s Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, previously stated that the US opposes “any unilateral changes to the status quo from either side; we do not support Taiwan independence; and we expect cross-strait differences to be resolved by peaceful means.” In the updated version published on Thursday, the line stating that the US does not support Taiwanese independence had been removed. The updated
‘CORRECT IDENTIFICATION’: Beginning in May, Taiwanese married to Japanese can register their home country as Taiwan in their spouse’s family record, ‘Nikkei Asia’ said The government yesterday thanked Japan for revising rules that would allow Taiwanese nationals married to Japanese citizens to list their home country as “Taiwan” in the official family record database. At present, Taiwanese have to select “China.” Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said the new rule, set to be implemented in May, would now “correctly” identify Taiwanese in Japan and help protect their rights, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. The statement was released after Nikkei Asia reported the new policy earlier yesterday. The name and nationality of a non-Japanese person marrying a Japanese national is added to the
AT RISK: The council reiterated that people should seriously consider the necessity of visiting China, after Beijing passed 22 guidelines to punish ‘die-hard’ separatists The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) has since Jan. 1 last year received 65 petitions regarding Taiwanese who were interrogated or detained in China, MAC Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday. Fifty-two either went missing or had their personal freedoms restricted, with some put in criminal detention, while 13 were interrogated and temporarily detained, he said in a radio interview. On June 21 last year, China announced 22 guidelines to punish “die-hard Taiwanese independence separatists,” allowing Chinese courts to try people in absentia. The guidelines are uncivilized and inhumane, allowing Beijing to seize assets and issue the death penalty, with no regard for potential
‘UNITED FRONT’ FRONTS: Barring contact with Huaqiao and Jinan universities is needed to stop China targeting Taiwanese students, the education minister said Taiwan has blacklisted two Chinese universities from conducting academic exchange programs in the nation after reports that the institutes are arms of Beijing’s United Front Work Department, Minister of Education Cheng Ying-yao (鄭英耀) said in an exclusive interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) published yesterday. China’s Huaqiao University in Xiamen and Quanzhou, as well as Jinan University in Guangzhou, which have 600 and 1,500 Taiwanese on their rolls respectively, are under direct control of the Chinese government’s political warfare branch, Cheng said, citing reports by national security officials. A comprehensive ban on Taiwanese institutions collaborating or
RSS