This is an incredible number. Is there a precedent to a layoff this large? It’s expected to save Citi $2.5bn
Does anyone know which areas will be impacted? There have already been 60,000 banking layoffs thus far industry wide.
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I think that a lot of people loitering around here have this innate fear whenever they hear "layoffs" they think that investment banking/S&T is going to be purged. But the thing is, Citi is so much more than that. It has a huge, bloated back and middle office, there's the unwinding of the retail businesses across the world, branches in the US that probably don't need to be open with digitalisation... I would expect that these are the areas that would be affected the most. Banking has already been culled significantly. They're hiring far fewer interns and FT. With the market hopefully going to turn this year, they probably won't go after Banking anymore. But the layovers in the back and middle office probably will go.
As someone drowning in their back office, I can confirm.
What I do there has already been automated away at a place like JPmorgan. I think the headcount of my team will be significantly smaller 5 years from now
Next week*
Lehman had over 26,000 employees.
Pretty sure that most layoffs will happen in offices (back office and middle management layers) and retail branches outside the US as Citi pulls back from other non-core markets.
Holy fk what
Wtf, that’s a lot of boxes ppl gotta be packin
Does this include retail banking offices?
Did citi pay bonuses out yet?
Confirmed today. 60% less than what I got last year for the same rating. Well below inflation too.
Will this impact intern return offer rates?
If you’re top bucket as an intern, then you may have a better chance at getting a return offer.
How many interns get rated top bucket? A third?
.
Their IBD reported solid results, cuts are most likely to be in non-core geographies and divisions as pointed out above
Would interns be impacted in s&t?
S&T always has low conversion rates across banks.
Is this mainly in US?
Know a handful of classmates who I think are returning to Citi in non-IB roles. Hopefully no one gets their offers revoked. Know of a few Class of 2023 people who've already been employed for ~6 months at Citi, I do wonder if any of them will be impacted.
And wow at someone else mentioning, Lehman had ~26,000 employees (a lot of Lehman employees ended up at Barclays - my cousin was one of those lucky ones who had that option. So this situation for Citi ex-employees without a readily available lateral opportunity will be different). Didn't realize how comparable those two numbers are.
Were the 60,000 layoffs specifically in investment banking or just overall?
Where did you get the count from?
The IB division is only a tiny fraction of Citi. Doubt even a thousand people.
Does Citi only operate in US and UK? How are there only 1000 people in IB?
The cuts should almost exclusively be within the retail/commercial banking division as well as the middle and back offices, and possibly some within S&T and Markets. Their IBD posted strong results as another poster mentioned and is currently running quite lean especially at the junior level. Heard some of their IB groups are vastly understaffed.
Commercial banking isn't the same as retail banking. I don't think they're cutting commercial banking tbh, I thought they were building it out more.
Do you think some Citi groups would be taking lateral analyst hires?
Right now? No. There’s a hiring freeze.
No jobs at all within BCMA at Citi
Commercial Banking produces the most revenue I believe. I doubt they cut there
All I know is if they layoff anyone in my coverage group VP or below we are totally fucked.
Have been getting cooked since December.
Same here. In a group with basically 1:1 MD to analyst ratio so the analysts are safe but have been getting absolutely cooked. The entire group would be screwed if we even lose 1 or 2 juniors.
On the other hand, there are quite a few annoying / incompetent MBA associates that are getting 2x analyst pay only to be 0.5x as productive so they might be on the chopping block if the company even decide to make any cuts in IBD, which I think is unlikely. We definitely under-hired analysts and over-hired MBA associates, and now have almost twice as many associates as analysts. Wouldn't be surprised to see some trimming at the associate level just to balance out the team structure and remove some incompetent MBA associates.
What group are you in?
Not OP but guessing either industrials or TMT
Should citi IB be hiring more lateral juniors?
Some groups will get December graduates joining early this month, and the new hires are only a few months from hitting the desk. Citi may fill roles for people who leave + a lateral or two here or there, but highly doubt they are going on a hiring spree until deal flow more definitively comes back. They learned the hard way in 2021 hiring a billion laterals.
Does that mean that the incoming Analysts for Summer 2024 hopefully should be safe - insofar the ones who actually want to stay on for the medium-term?
Isn't part of this due to the impact of ai btw?
No, AI is in its early stages at these banks - just figuring out how to use it in the business setting, not laying people off because it ate their job already. Maybe in a few years.
Citi is just incredibly bloated, has redundant divisions and excessive layers, and most importantly - has been trying to exit big parts of its retail business for years, which will be quite a bit of that 20k headcount reduction.
Which divisions of the retail business?
Agree. AI at investment banks in 2024 is still locked behind restrictions and has very few authorized users. Among the authorized users, almost all of them will be tech employees, software developers, etc. Perfecting the use cases and legal / regulatory environment is ongoing and has very much still to come.
Are there any job openings?
More to likely quit, heard bonuses were disappointing this year
That's a wild number.
They could have job openings sometime soon - people were getting under 60k bonus in many groups, even for associates
They haven't been replacing people that have been leaving for ages.
Eventually it leads to more hiring
That's to create attrition and not necessarily replace people outside of the normal summer IB programs. I'm sure they will have an odd role open now and again but not much. The big firms also try to use internal lateraling / recruiting if possible.
Attrition happens every year when the vast majority of analyst classes quit, along with numerous associates and VPs here and there, eventually teams would need to hire more people
Would rather keep team lean, the lateral hires take too long to train and aren’t as sharp
Yes and they are replaced by the summer class each year. Teams are largely still more bloated then they've ever been. There will likely be more cuts / attrition than new hires for next 1-2 years. Obivously it will vary some by bank and by group. I just wouldn't expect hiring to pick up much this year, especially when the bank is planning on cutting a bunch of employees broadly across the bank.
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