CITY JOBS FEARS OVER BANK RESCUE

THOUSANDS AT RISK AFTER CREDIT SUISSE TAKEOVER AS MARKET JITTERS CONTINUE

- Simon English, John Dunne, Nicholas Cecil and Simon Hunt

THOUSANDS of City jobs are at risk in the wake of the £2.5 billion rescue takeover of imploding Credit Suisse by arch rival UBS, analysts warned today.

The emergency deal cobbled together yesterday was supposed to restore confidence in markets worried about a re-run of the 2008 financial crash.

But markets remained febrile today and banks including Credit Suisse in particular are highly likely to axe jobs.

The fallen Swiss banking giant, which was still saying to staff it will pay promised bonuses despite the crisis, employs 5,000 in the UK at Canary Wharf, while UBS has 6,000 mostly at Broadgate in the City.

City veteran David Buik, of Aquis Exchange, said: “There will be ‘cherry picking’ with CS likely to lose more jobs. I would expect 2,000 jobs in total to go.”

Neil Wilson at markets.com said: “It’s going to be rough. Credit Suisse was always heading for shrinkage anyway. It was just one disaster after another at that bank.”

Mark Yallop, former chief executive of UBS in the UK, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “It’s inevitable that a merger of this sort will result in some further job losses.

“I would imagine those would be concentrated in the risky investment banking business at Credit Suisse which is partly the cause of the problems that the firm is experiencing, and in middle, backoffice, technology and operational roles.”