Traders laid off at bank

JPMorgan again cuts equities unit

— JPMorgan Chase & Co., grappling with Wall Street’s worst year for stock-trading since 2008, cut pay at the equities unit about 4 percent and pushed out about three dozen employees, people with knowledge of the moves said.

About two dozen U.S. traders and sales staff members were fired, and some senior employees left voluntarily as the unit aligned pay more closely with revenue, said the people, asking to not be identified because the measures aren’t public. The bank also dismissed equity analysts last week, three people said, with one saying about a dozen were affected.

Industry wide equities-trading revenue fell 5 percent last year, the third- straight annual drop, according to analytics firm Coalition Ltd.

JPMorgan has pared equities jobs each year since2008, former and current executives said.

Equities-trading chief Tim Throsby has been reviewing the unit since around March, these people said.

Assisted by Marc Badrichani and Jason Sippel, he found that pay for equities traders and sales staff was too high compared with revenue, the people said.

The unit posted a 1.8 percent drop in revenue to $4.4billion last year, compared with a 4 percent gain in fixed income trading revenue to $15.4 billion.

About three managing directors and 18 executive directors were cut, current and former executives said. A vice president also left, two people said.

A spokesman for the New York-based company said she couldn’t comment on the departures. The bank’s stock fell 34 cents to close Friday at $48.88.

Equities trading was hardest-hit by job cuts in 2012,when the top 10 investment banks eliminated 2,700 front office workers, or about 14 percent, according to data released Thursday by Coalition.

Equities-trading revenue at the 10 banks was $33 billion, the lowest since 2008, Coalition said.

Cash equities, the trading of common shares on public exchanges, produced $10 billion in revenue at the 10 largest investment banks, down 40 percent from 2008 as firms grappled with plunging volume, the data show.

Equities account for about a quarter of total trading and investment-banking revenue. They include commissions and gains from buying and selling stocks, futures, options and other equity derivatives, as well as fees and interest income from providing services and lending to hedge funds.

Throsby and other executives prepared staff in the Americas for reductions and lower pay with a conference call on Jan. 17, the day after the bank reported a record $21.3 billion in net income for 2012.

Headcount, executives said, would be coming down, according to two people on the call.

The bank would probably replace more highly paid senior executives with less costly junior traders and sales staff, they said.

Pay in the broader investment bank, which includes deal makers and fixed-income traders, fell by about 3 percent in 2012, people briefed on the compensation said this month.

Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon, 56, ousted top managers and shuffled others around after traders in the chief investment office lost more than $6.2 billion on a bad derivatives bet in the first three quarters of last year.

Business, Pages 27 on 02/16/2013

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