Goldman Sachs Ready to Layoff More than 3,000 Employees

VIVA – Goldman Sachs, a financial services and investment bank, is preparing to lay off thousands of employees on Wednesday, January 11, 2023. It should be done to deal with the difficult economic sector in 2023.

As reported from Antara, Tuesday, January 10, 2023, according to sources familiar with the move, more than 3,000 employees will be laid off, but the final number has not yet been determined. The scale of the layoffs will be the largest since the 2008 financial crisis, one of the sources said.

The source cannot be named as the information has not been disclosed to the public. Goldman Sachs also declined to comment when confirmed.

Bloomberg News reported on Sunday, January 9, 2023, that Goldman will eliminate about 3,200 positions. Goldman had 49,100 employees at the end of the third quarter, having added significant staff numbers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The corporate policy will likely affect most of the bank's major divisions, but will center on Goldman Sachs' investment banking arm, one of the sources said. Wall Street banks have seen a major decline in the firm's deal-making activity as a result of volatile global financial markets.

Hundreds of jobs are also likely to be cut from Goldman Sachs' consumer business, Marcus, after scaling back plans for the loss-making unit, the sources said.

Meanwhile, the bank's chief executive David Solomon sent a year-end vote memo to staff warning of headcount reductions in the first half of January, two separate sources said. Goldman Sachs also declined to comment on the memo.

It is known that these layoffs happen ahead of the bank's annual bonus payments which are usually sent out at the end of January and are expected to drop by around 40 percent. The bank restated its annual performance review and staff reduction process in September after pausing for two years during the pandemic.

Global investment banking fees nearly halved in 2022, with US$77 billion earned by banks, down from US$132.3 billion one year earlier, Dealogic data revealed. The total value of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) globally has slumped 37 percent to US$3.66 trillion as of December 20, according to Dealogic data, after hitting an all-time high of US$5.9 trillion.