Bad Commerz
Working for the European’s might be slightly preferable to working for Hank Paulson’s two headed monster, but I generally prefer Yanks to Europeans and Japanese.
With heads rolling left and right it should only be a matter of time before a story surfaces that top this, one of the most bungled layoffs of all time:
2004:
.....the last major investment banking job cull undertaken by Commerzbank - the hundreds of jobs that went in London in 2004, when the bank decided to refocus its securities business.
The cull was generally regarded as a bunged and botched exercise undertaken by professionals who should have know better. The bank closed the securities unit some four years ago, after allegedly raking up losses of over $900m. Included in the cull were the firm’s 10-strong prop trading team, who are said to have been called early one morning at their homes and told that their services were no longer required.
The problem was, so it was reported in the media at the time, that the traders were still running open positions, mainly in convertible bonds. And some of them, miffed that they had been canned in a rather callous manner, are alleged to have called up traders at rival firms and spilled the beans on the positions, enabling their rivals to allegedly turn a healthy profit by pulling their bids on the bonds they knew Commerzbank was getting ready to dump. The German bank is thought to have lost another $85m that week, just because of the careless way it is said to have fired their traders. In the end, the bank is said to have had to recall some of the traders anyway, as it required their help to close-out their positions.
How NOT To Lay-off Investment Bankers
Here is the City
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