After the recent financial crisis, many European banking firms were forced to restructure their businesses in the wake of new regulations requiring them to hold enough capital against risky assets.
The data was collected from 25 of the Europe’s 30 largest banks including Barclays, Deutsche Bank and UBS. The fall in the jobs was in spite of nine banks adding jobs in the first half of the year.
Same is the case with the US, where the country’s four largest banks, including JP Morgan, Bank of America, Citi Group and Wells Fargo have slashed around 23,300 jobs in the first half of this year, taking the total count of jobs cuts in the last 12 months to more than 52,000, which accounted for 5% of the total workforce.
Kennedy Group, a recruitment firm that specialises in investment banking and hedge funds, CEO Jason Kennedy was quoted by the news agency as saying: "Banks in 2014 do not hesitate to shut down businesses that are loss-making … there’s (no longer) any shame in that.
"New-age banks have fewer people, less product and are less profitable."
Image: European banking jobs were down by 1.2% in the first half of 2014. Photo: courtesy of gubgib / FreeDigitalPhotos.net.
