Free Republic

Barclays is preparing a radical overhaul of its troubled investment bank in a move which is expected to result in thousands of job cuts, adding to pressure on the division’s two heads. The shake-up comes amid growing investor disquiet about the bank’s decision to increase bonus payments by 10 per cent to a total of £2.4bn last year in spite of a one-third fall in its pre-tax profits. Shareholders are also unhappy about rising costs and falling profits at the investment bank, which is jointly run by Tom King in the US and Eric Bommensath in Europe. The new strategy...

For decades, investment bankers have held the key to untold riches -- but now they're being laid off by the tens of thousands. As the crisis forces the industry to search for a new identity, is it ready to mend its ways? The suicide victims chose a location with symbolic significance. Last fall, only a few weeks apart, a businesswoman and a banker went to the Coq d'Argent, an upscale restaurant and hot spot in the world of London high finance, located on the top floor of a shopping complex, to end their lives. The woman put down her purse...

Deutsche Bank is laying off 1900 people. 1500 of them are in the investment bank. Here's the press release. This news comes as Meredith Whitney's been chatting with Tom Keene on Bloomberg TV this morning, and just as she started explaining why she thought Wall Street's big banks would initiate massive layoffs (50,000, actually). Deutsche Bank's stock is shooting up, according to Bloomberg. That makes sense according to Whitney's thesis as she explained it to Maria Bartiromo last week— the market will reward banks that shrink their staff and their business.