Financial services major Barclays will reduce its headcount by about 2,100 in investment banking and money management, as part of its cost-cutting measures.“Barclays is cutting about 2,100 jobs worldwide in investment banking and money management as it slashes costs to cope with the fall-out from the credit crisis”, a newspaper reported. According to the paper, the company is cutting 1,300 people from Barclays Capital, the debt-focused investment banking business, 500 from the Barclays Wealth private banking arm, and 330 in asset management business Barclays Global Investors. Overall, the cuts amount to 7 per cent of the three divisions’ staff, it added.Noting that Barclays declined to reveal where the job cuts would come, the newspaper said that the axe is expected to fall heavily in London and New York. However, the bank would continue to hire in areas such as equities, the report published online said. Last year, Barclays had acquired the US operations of bankrupt Lehman Brothers.The newspaper reported that at Barclays Wealth, cuts are expected in London, Glasgow and the Channel Islands. Quoting Unite, which represents staff at Barclays Wealth’s division, the daily said, “We cannot continue with this situation of daily job cuts without any justification or explanation of the broader strategy for the bank.”“The bank, which built the units aggressively over the past five years to account for almost half of revenue, said it wanted to be ‘appropriately sized’, given the current market conditions,” it added.The move is likely to spark fears of further cost-cutting in Barclays’ retail and corporate banking division, w\]hich includes its bank branch network, the report noted.
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