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‘Citibank to shed 52,000 staff’

November 26, 2008 at 2:50 pm

Citibank, one of the largest consumer banking companies in the world, has announced that extensive redundancies are inevitable if the bank is to pull itself out of financial oblivion. 52,000 jobs are expected to face the axe if Citibank fails to procure enough funds to stem the flow of cash out of its vaults.

In April of last year, Citibank sent 17,000 people to the dole office in an effort to cut costs and to restructure the company as a whole. A further 23,000 workers received their marching orders at the beginning of 2008. The recent announcement, while not totally unexpected, may belie an increasingly dire situation that could topple the bank once and for all.

Experts maintain that Citibank is too big to collapse and a rescue package from the U.S. government will arrive in the coming weeks. The bank is haemorrhaging money, however, and any financial aid from the government’s pockets would be in the region of £13.3billion.

It is worth noting that HBOS, a British bank on the verge of collapse, has yet to find a white knight to burden with its substantial financial woes. Citibank is out of options: either the government offers to return the bank to a solvent position or the 300,000 people that remain on Citi’s books can kiss their jobs goodbye.

Many financial institutions are braced for another month of chaos. Goldman Sachs, the Royal Bank of Scotland, and JP Morgan are all expected to announce company-wide redundancies before the end of November. The 12,000 employees of Egg, a British subsidiary of Citibank, are also at risk of redundancy.

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