Citigroup Inc. is still paring staff at its corporate and consumer banking divisions as the market slowdown takes its toll.
The nations largest banking company said in a filing late Monday with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it had earmarked 3,500 jobs for cutting over the next year, about 60% of them in U.S. operations. That is in addition to the 1,200 back-office jobs in its corporate and investment banking unit that Citi said in March that it would cut.
Citi has been steadily cutting for a year, in part because of acquisitions. Last year it slated 7,400 jobs for elimination, 4,600 of them related to the purchase of Associates First Capital Corp.
But job cuts have taken on a new urgency in the industry this year. Few financial firms have managed to escape the need to cut staff to adjust to the plunge in business from capital markets activities.
For example, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., which was already reducing staff in the wake of Chase Manhattan Corp.s December purchase of J.P. Morgan & Co., said last month that because of the market slowdown its cuts would substantially exceed the original 5,000 estimate. Merrill Lynch & Co., FleetBoston Financial Corp., and Charles Schwab Corp. have also been paring back.
During a conference call to announce Citigroups second-quarter earnings, Sanford I. Weill, the chairman and chief executive officer, alluded to the latest round of cuts but declined to offer specific numbers. Like other firms, Citi is looking to control expense growth until the markets can rebound and revive profits from investment banking, Mr. Weill said.
Citi recorded $177 million of pretax charges in the second quarter to pay severance for the 3,500 planned layoffs. About 500 of those jobs have already been eliminated, and the rest will be cut over the next year, the company told the SEC.
It said job cuts accomplished by selling one business unit would save $61 million that had been put aside for restructuring. Though Citi did not identify the unit, it sold its Robinson-Humphrey Co. investment banking division to SunTrust Banks Inc. last month.
Citi also reported last month that second-quarter profits had risen 6% from a year earlier, largely because of cost cutting and strong gains in consumer banking.
