Credit Suisse to cut 150 UK securities jobs

Investment bank Credit Suisse said on Monday it plans to cut about 150 jobs in Britain, joining rivals in shedding London staff as the credit crunch hits balance sheets and earnings outlooks.

"Due to market conditions and projected staffing levels required to meet client needs, we are reducing headcount by approximately 150 in the United Kingdom across our global securities department within the investment banking division," a spokeswoman for the bank said.

Sources familiar with the matter told Reuters the bank was currently in consultation over the cuts and the securities unit's fixed-income division was likely to take a high proportion of the cuts.

Credit Suisse's 150 new job cuts in London are in addition to 170 cuts worldwide announced in October.

The investment bank is unlikely to be the last to jettison employees to cut costs, as banks adjust to tougher conditions after several years of buoyant markets.

"On the credit side of trading especially, they (banks) will have come into the start of the year hoping that markets would return to normality," said Matthew Clark, a banking analyst at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods in London.

"Clearly they haven't, so you'll see continued right-sizing of investment banking businesses in anticipation of lower volumes in 2008."

Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce said last month it planned to cut about 10 percent of its London workforce, while Dresdner Kleinwort, part of Allianz, said in December it planned to cut about 60 jobs in its credit department.

Credit Suisse's investment bank was hit by writedowns of more than 2.2 billion Swiss francs (1 billion pounds) in November. However, this is dwarfed by those at other banks, such as arch-rival UBS, which has racked up $14.5 billion in writedowns.

UBS said in October it was slashing 1,500 jobs in its capital markets and investment banking businesses worldwide.

The Credit Suisse spokeswoman added the bank plans to invest in other areas.

"Over the next year, we also expect to continue to invest in areas targeted for revenue growth, most notably algorithmic trading, emerging markets, commodities, derivatives, life finance and prime services," she said.