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40,000 Job Losses At Merrill Lynch - Not!

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MI6 - June 08
Martin Ward Anderson
The bold writing under a profile of Merrill Lynch President Greg Fleming in Monday's Times declares that the executive 'is touring the world rallying his troops, demoralised by losses of $19bn and 40,000 job cuts'.

Well, Fleming probably wouldn't have much 'touring' to do if Merrill had axed 40,000 heads (almost two-thirds of the firm). Yes, it was a typo. It should have read '4,000'. Our own tally of job losses at the firm is actually 5,600, however, which represents around 8.8% of the firm. According to HereIsTheCity research, this is actually a smaller percentage of heads cut (or going to be cut) by rivals like JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, UBS, Lehman Brothers, Bank of America and Citi.

The New York Times reports that Citi has ditched its 'Let's Get It Done' slogan in favour of 'The Citi Never Sleeps'. Wags suggest that someone was certainly sleeping on the job when all those billions in asset writedowns occurred. There's no truth in the rumour, however, that Citi shareholders have co-opted the 'Let's Get It Done' slogan for themselves, and amended it to 'We've Been Done'.

Finally, there are media reports that a new graduate advisory business has sprung up. Apparently unemployed or hard-up bankers can make up to £200 an-hour to take graduates through the graduate recruitment process and help them bag a top job in the financial markets. Quite why graduates would be interested in advice from bankers who were unable to keep their jobs, or need to do work on the side to supplement their income as they bagged a cr.p bonus, is not clear.

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