Posted on 08/17/2007 7:42:13 AM PDT by Hydroshock
LONDON (CNNMoney.com) -- Job cuts have begun at Bear Stearns and that could mark the start of a broader wave of layoffs across Wall Street as firms survey the damage caused by the recent downturn in financial markets.
Some 240 employees at a Bear Stearns lending unit were laid off Wednesday, according to a company spokesperson.
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The pink slips come a little more than a month after two of the firm's hedge funds blew up, ultimately costing Bear Stearns co-president Warren Spector his job.
The meltdown in financial markets is likely to lead to more job cuts on Wall Street, headhunters say.
"Certainly some departments are going to be hurt," said Danny Sarch, president of Leitner Sarch Consultants, a New York firm which specializes in the financial services industry.
Credit contagion: Is the worst over? In many cases, the divisions which have been hit most by the recent downturn are the ones that have been aggressively growing their headcount. The prime brokerage business, which services hedge funds, for instance, has grown dramatically in recent years, Sarch noted.
(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...
Maybe this will make Jim Kramer’s head explode.
I doubt that is much of a feat.
I think his head already exploded did you catch his rant about the fed needing to cut the interest rates?
OUCH!
In other news, Ferrari sales plunged....
The credit rating agencies should now downsize by 100% of their staffs.
...maybe they can pick produce or do other jobs that “Americans are not willing to do”. This could solve the “labor problem” they’re always spouting off about.
Actually, if they could accurately report that would be a start.
Ah, the smell of schadenfreude in the morning...
Need we check the archives for the articles on the size of the December bonuses at B-S et. al. for additional evidence of Wall Street hubris that allows them to live for the moment (and the next Ferrari)?
This was on the back pages of our student handbook in high school. Its funny but it was beaten into our heads for 4 years and most of the guys I know have never been "unemployed".
They might not have stayed at one job, but have always had "prospects". I think you should show your kids this....it can't hurt.
The best thing about this is that libs will hate it.
The story of the credit agencies remains to play out. In what amounts to a macro version of a crooked appraiser pumping the value of a to-be-bought home so that a shaky loan will go through, these agencies saw that they would be edged out of the very lucrative rating biz if they applied actual intelligence to the truckloads of crap debt tranches that were coming to market. And so they played along. My prediction is that these cos will be entangled with piles of lawsuits for a very long time to come.
I would never deal with a Wall Street firm that has ‘Bear’ in its name.
Indeed. Unlike the other failures (Orange County Bankruptcy, Enron), this time they can’t blame it on fraud by the auditing firms, or issuers.
Investors must exercise caveat emptor — relying on firms that get paid to do the research (similar to the hyping of dot.com stocks by Wall Street “analysts” in the late 90s) is a game for a fool.
All the nasty gloating by some losers on this thread reveals much about their crypto-Marxist, anti-business mentality is for naught.
But you, ASD, bring up an important point - the ratings agencies suffer from a fundamental flaw in their business model: they are paid to assess the creditworthiness of the people who are paying them.
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