Credit Suisse will be cutting more than 10 per cent of European investment bankers this year. Prior to this, the company already fired hundreds of staff in London and Zurich last month. 

The crisis seems to have hit the Swiss lender hard as it announced in October that it planned to cut as many as 9,000 roles globally over the next three years. 

However, these initiatives have stepped up in recent weeks as the bank prepares to announce its second consecutive annual loss next month. Credit Suisse's total workforce is 52,000, according to a report by Financial Times.

The same report also predicted a wave of heavy job cuts across investment banks globally, following on the heels of Goldman Sachs, which is gearing up to fire more than 3,000 staff this week. 

This comes as no surprise since investment banking revenues were hit severely last year and lenders are under pressure to cut costs. 

When it comes to Credit Suisse, the company is under tremendous stress given it suffered huge client withdrawals in October. In the initial wave of layoff, the company laid off 2,700 global workforces in December, which included 540 job cuts in Switzerland and as many as 200 in London.

If media reports are to be believed, the discussions over the next round of layoffs began before Christmas, targeting 10 per cent of investment banking jobs in Europe. However, a final decision is expected next month.

Credit Suisse employs around 17,000 investment bankers globally. The company’s main centres are in New York and London. In the November of 2022, Credit Suisse Group went ahead with sweeping plans to cut 9,000 jobs in Asia, starting with senior bankers. 

The move was seen as part of the company-wide overhaul meant to draw a line under a series of scandals and help it recover from a £3.5bn loss. Managing directors across investment banking and financing became casualties as the Swiss giant carried out its plan to reduce global headcount by 9,000, Bloomberg reported.

Johnson Chui, Asia-Pacific head of equity capital markets, Karen Yap from the financing group, and Ee-lin Tan, head of the rating advisory, were asked to leave. The departures also included Kuvesh Pather, the head of trading for the financing group in Australia, at least two Singapore-based bankers from the same group, and two directors from investment banking and capital markets.

Other than Credit Suisse, some of the major companies that have kicked out their employees in 2023 are ShareChat, Dunzo, Vodafone, BlackRock, Coinbase, Amazon, Salesforce, Morgan Stanley, McDonald's, Goldman Sachs, and others.