Recruiters say one of the firms likely to cut the most is Credit Suisse. The firm's investment banking division has struggled recently. Last year, Credit Suisse said that it plans to eliminate 3,500 jobs, across the whole bank, not just its Wall Street business. About 2,000 of those job cuts have already been completed. Sources say a majority of the remaining cuts will come from the firm's investment bank, and that the bank may end up cutting more workers than earlier announced. Credit Suisse declined to comment.
Other firms that sources say are likely to make deep job cuts in their investment banking divisions are Bank of America, which bought Merrill Lynch during the financial crisis, and Barclays, which acquired the U.S. investment banking division of Lehman Brothers out of bankruptcy. But recruiters say that all of the big banks, including Goldman Sachs, appear to be on the verge of making cutbacks.
"Banks haven't come up with a model that makes up the profits they used to get from proprietary trading, CDOs and other structure deals they used to do," says Goldstein. "I have heard about a lot of people who didn't get the promotions they were expecting. That's usually a sign that banks are getting ready to get rid of people."
