Wall Street job cuts will tarnish Big Apple
Janet Whitman, Financial Post
Published: Monday, September 15, 2008
Link: http://www.financialpost.com/news/story.html?id=792280
NEW YORK – The Big Apple could be pushed into a deep recession as the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and takeover of Merrill Lynch & Co. lead to a likely tsunami of pink slips on Wall Street.
New York City's Independent Budget Office is scrambling to come up with new figures to estimate the impact on the city's economy as the credit crisis claims two of its biggest victims yet.
Employees at Lehman Brothers' midtown Manhattan headquarters were packing up boxes of personal belongings in anticipation of mass layoffs as the 158-year old bank heads for liquidation.
It's expected that the firm's entire 25,000 global workforce could soon be on the hunt for new jobs.
Meanwhile, a big chunk of Merrill Lynch & Co.'s 60,000 worldwide workforce also might get the axe after the storied Wall Street bank agreed to a takeover late late Sunday by Bank of America.
The dramatic cuts would mark a big blow for New York, which gets a huge portion of its tax revenue from Wall Street's high-income earners.
Banks and brokerages account for nearly 35% of all salaries and wages in New York.
The loss of such big spenders also could dramatically cool New York's hot real-estate market and diminish demand in the city's restaurants and retail outlets.
Wall Street layoffs tend to have a ripple effect, with each job cut there leading to three or four other jobs cut in the city.
Worried about the impact Lehman's collapse and Merrill's takeover, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg worked the phones over the weekend to get a handle on the crisis.
Mr. Bloomberg, himself a former Wall Street executive, cancelled a trip to California to tackle the problems at home.
The latest round of expected job cuts comes on top of a slew of layoffs already on Wall Street as banks muddle through the mess that began 14 months ago with the meltdown in the U.S. home-mortgage market.
Even before yesterday's developments at Lehman and Merrill, New York was hit by its deepest job cuts since the burst of the technology bubble.
jwhitman@nationalpost.com
Janet Whitman, Financial Post
Published: Monday, September 15, 2008
Link: http://www.financialpost.com/news/story.html?id=792280
NEW YORK – The Big Apple could be pushed into a deep recession as the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and takeover of Merrill Lynch & Co. lead to a likely tsunami of pink slips on Wall Street.
New York City's Independent Budget Office is scrambling to come up with new figures to estimate the impact on the city's economy as the credit crisis claims two of its biggest victims yet.
Employees at Lehman Brothers' midtown Manhattan headquarters were packing up boxes of personal belongings in anticipation of mass layoffs as the 158-year old bank heads for liquidation.
It's expected that the firm's entire 25,000 global workforce could soon be on the hunt for new jobs.
Meanwhile, a big chunk of Merrill Lynch & Co.'s 60,000 worldwide workforce also might get the axe after the storied Wall Street bank agreed to a takeover late late Sunday by Bank of America.
The dramatic cuts would mark a big blow for New York, which gets a huge portion of its tax revenue from Wall Street's high-income earners.
Banks and brokerages account for nearly 35% of all salaries and wages in New York.
The loss of such big spenders also could dramatically cool New York's hot real-estate market and diminish demand in the city's restaurants and retail outlets.
Wall Street layoffs tend to have a ripple effect, with each job cut there leading to three or four other jobs cut in the city.
Worried about the impact Lehman's collapse and Merrill's takeover, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg worked the phones over the weekend to get a handle on the crisis.
Mr. Bloomberg, himself a former Wall Street executive, cancelled a trip to California to tackle the problems at home.
The latest round of expected job cuts comes on top of a slew of layoffs already on Wall Street as banks muddle through the mess that began 14 months ago with the meltdown in the U.S. home-mortgage market.
Even before yesterday's developments at Lehman and Merrill, New York was hit by its deepest job cuts since the burst of the technology bubble.
jwhitman@nationalpost.com
