On both sides of the Atlantic, bankers are hearing a loud, repetitive noise: chop, chop, chop. The latest headcount reduction comes courtesy of JPMorgan. It looks dramatic: 17,000 jobs, or 6.5 per cent of the bank’s staff at the end 2012. Most of that – 13,000 to 15,000 bodies and about $3bn of savings – will be in mortgage banking, largely staff that have been busy resolving the heaps of troubled mortgages that piled up after the US housing bust. Several years on, that pile is diminishing. JPMorgan’s inventory of loans to borrowers seeking modifications, for example, fell 27 per cent last year.
在大西洋的兩岸，銀行家們都聽到一個響亮的聲音不斷重復著：裁員！裁員！裁員！摩根大通(JPMorgan Chase)是最新一家宣布裁員的銀行。該行此次裁員看起來規模很大：共裁減1.7萬個工作崗位，占其2012年末員工總數的6.5%。絕大多數被裁崗位來自抵押貸款業務部門——裁員1.3萬至1.5萬人，可節省約30億美元。這些員工之前主要負責處理美國房地產泡沫破裂后出現的大量問題抵押貸款。如今金融危機已經過去了好幾年，問題貸款規模日漸縮小。例如，借款人尋求修訂抵押貸款條款的貸款存量去年下降了27%。