Macquarie Bank sacks 100 investment bankers

Macquarie Group has sacked almost 100 investment bankers and advisers in a savage day of job cutting across the diversified bank.

Most of the positions abolished were in the bank’s Sydney office, but there were also cuts in Melbourne and Brisbane.

The cuts were thought to be the largest by an investment bank in Australia in the current round of labour market consolidation.

The reductions came as 40 staff were made redundant this week at Goldman Sachs, and 30 people lost their jobs at Deutsche Bank in Sydney.

There are estimates that up to 10,000 jobs will go in the financial services sector as a result of the global financial crisis.

There were suggestions yesterday that Macquarie could end up cutting up to 1000 of its 13,000 employees around the world.

“Everyone is looking at each other wondering if they are safe,” one staff member said last night.

The cuts yesterday were announced from 11am AEDT at the bank’s Martin Place headquarters in Sydney. There were briefings with the bank’s senior managers in the morning before the news was announced.

The focus of the job cuts was on newer employees. None of the division’s “star” bankers who have written business has been sacked yet.

“Macquarie businesses respond to market circumstances on a business-by-business, region-by-region basis,” a spokeswoman said.

“All of our businesses look at their staffing levels constantly. Over the last 12 months, there have been numerous changes to staffing levels across the businesses and this is continuing.”

The rush of redundancies were centred on the investment bank, which is part of Macquarie Capital. The bank’s advisory business, merger and acquisition and equity capital markets are under the same umbrella.

On the equity capital market side and M&A, Macquarie has fallen down the list of advisers.

It is, however, the No1 adviser to Qantas in its merger bid with British Airways.

At Goldman Sachs, this week’s job losses were primarily on the IT and back office side of the business. As well, 10 investment bankers have been sacked in the past fortnight.

At Deutsche, most of the 30 jobs cut on Wednesday were in market operations.