Morgan Stanley to slash 1,800 jobs

LONDON: Investment bank Morgan Stanley is all set to prune its workforce by 1,800 employees, or about four per cent of its global manpower, in the wake of economic turmoil. "Morgan Stanley is preparing to cut up to 1,800 jobs, or about 4 per cent of its global workforce, as the financial crisis continues to take its toll on Wall Street," the Financial Times said. Quoting people close to the situation the report said, " the fresh round of job cuts was part of Morgan Stanley's efforts to reduce its staff to reflect sharply lower activity in areas ranging from capital markets to mergers and acquisitions." The daily attributing to people close to the situation noted that the redundancies would be spread across Morgan Stanley's range of businesses and regions, but would not affect its wealth management unit. "The cuts were likely to fall more heavily on the bank's back-office and support functions," the report added. According to the daily, the company's executives have said it wants to shrink its balance sheet and workforce to cope with the crisis, the report noted. For the full year 2008, Morgan Stanley's profits tumbled to 1.7 billion dollars, compared with 3.2 billion dollars in the year-ago period. While its balance sheet dropped from "1,000 billion dollars-worth of assets to 650 billion dollars as the company slashed its debt levels". Financial institutions worldwide have cut thousands of jobs in recent months as part of their efforts to cope with the financial crisis, which even saw the collapse of Lehman Brothers last year.