Investment expert Peter Toogood warns that investment banks have had it.
“The game’s up. There’s no transactions, M&A isn’t happening, this is what deleveraging looks like," Toogood told CNBC.
"It’s a decade of austerity and that makes people feel more unlucky.”
Investment banks are going to struggle, says Toogood.
“There’s not going to be mass lending going on,” he says. “The leverage game is over and people can’t accept it. Volumes are declining en masse and their headcounts are too high.”
Despite the fact that many people still hope and expect that authorities will fluff and stimulate, “it’s beginning to dawn on them that that’s where we’ll be – a relatively low level of activity, which doesn’t mean the world ends, it’s just a different shape,” Toogood says.
Fox Business News reports that Credit Suisse plans to cut 20-to-30 percent of its investment banking jobs in Europe, including those in advisory, mergers and acquisitions, and equity and debt-capital markets.
The cuts come as Credit Suisse, like many of its rivals, is under pressure to reduce costs, as the industry never fully recovered from the 2008 financial crisis. Credit Suisse suffered a dismal second half in 2011, and earnings in the first quarter this year were lackluster.
The second quarter promises to be no better, analysts said.
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