Normal view

There are new articles available, click to refresh the page.
Yesterday — 9 January 2025Main stream

From JPMorgan to Citigroup, how Wall Street does RTO

9 January 2025 at 08:29
Business people walking around dark skyscrapers and Wall Street sign 4x3

Rachel Mendelson/Insider

  • Wall Street jobs pay well, but work-from-home opportunities tend to be slim.
  • JPMorgan is considering whether to call all its employees back to the office full time.
  • Check out the RTO policies at the biggest financial firms like JPMorgan, Blackstone, and Citadel. 

Every day it seems as if another company is calling its workers back to the office five days a week. Amazon's office staff are back to their seats Monday through Friday, starting this month, as are the employees of telecom giant AT&T. JPMorgan Chase is also considering returning to a five-day workweek, according to Bloomberg News. 

Investment banks like Goldman Sachs and hedge funds like Citadel have been at the forefront of efforts to get employees working in the same place since the pandemic kicked off the work-from-home phenomenon. Goldman's CEO David Solomon famously blasted the work-from-home phenomenon as an "aberration" before most Americans were even vaccinated. Citadel's Ken Griffin said he feared that work-from-home was harming the nation and wished President Joe Biden would do something about it. 

So, which Wall Street firms are still letting employees work from home at least part of the time?  Here is our list of back-to-work mandates at the largest financial services companies.

Goldman Sachs 

Goldman Sachs started calling workers back in June 2021 and was initially once of the few financial firms to buck to remote work trend and demand pretty much everyone return to the office five days a week

Goldman started by welcoming employees back with ice cream and food trucks to get there. By 2022, it was actively monitoring attendance via ID badge swipes. In 2023, it cracked down on laggards, reminding staffers that the 5-days-a-week policy is for everyone — even during the dog days of summer

David Solomon
David Solomon, CEO of Goldman Sachs

Reuters

JPMorgan 

JPMorgan started calling workers back in July 2021 on a rolling basis and by 2022, had developed a hybrid work policy that was supposed to result in just 50% of the bank's employees returning to the office five days a week, including people who work in bank branches or in investment-banking jobs like sales and trading.

By April 2022, Dimon said that 40% of the bank's employees, which then numbered about 270,000, would be permitted to work a few days at home, while about 10% could work from home full time. Everyone else was expected to be in the office five days a week.

The next April, Dimon called all of the bank's managing directors back to the office five days a week, whether they worked in demanding revenue-producing jobs or led back-office departments like technology and compliance. Everyone else must be in at least three days a week. 

Like Goldman, JPMorgan has also been tracking attendance through ID badge swipes, data that it collects into a dashboard that can churn out reports for managers and other senior leaders.    

A spokesman for JPMorgan, which reported having 316,043 workers at the end of September, declined to comment on Bloomberg's reporting that it may soon revert to a five-day-a-week schedule for everyone. He said that roughly 70% of the bank's employees were already back in the office five days a week, while everyone else was back three or four days a week.

Jamie Dimon
Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of JPMorgan

Gretchen Ertl/AP

Citigroup 

Citi's CEO Jane Fraser is one of the few Wall Street CEOs who has not participated in the work-from-home bashing. Instead, she's embraced a hybrid work policy that currently allows most employees to work three days from the office and two days at home, depending on the job. Bank branch employees, for example, are still required to go in five days a week. 

Fraser has also not shied away from reminding the troops that working from home is a privilege, not a right. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in 2023, she said that the bank was calling workers with productivity issues back to their desks. 

"We do measure productivity very carefully," she said, according to Bloomberg. "You can see how productive someone is or isn't, and if they're not being productive we bring them back to the office, or back to the site, and we give them the coaching they need until they bring the productivity back up again."

A spokeswoman for the bank said Citi is "committed to our hybrid work model. She said that the majority of employees still work on a hybrid schedule, or at least three days in the office and up to two days remotely.

Jane Fraser speaking at the Milken Insitute
Jane Fraser, CEO of Citigroup

Patrick T. Fallon/Getty Images

Bank of America 

Bank of America's policy has morphed over time. In early 2022, it encouraged employees to work from the office more often but left room for flexibility at the manager's discretion. By May of that year, investment banking employees at all levels were being ordered to return to the office between four and five days a week.

Since 2022, Bank of America has required employees who are client-facing, like bankers and traders, to be in the office or meeting with clients five days a week. Everyone else must be in the office three days a week. A BofA spokesman confirmed that the policy established in 2022 remains in place.  

Early last year, the bank issued "letters of education" to employees who were in violation of the bank's return-to-office policies, BI reported. "Failure to follow the workplace excellence expectations applicable to your role within two weeks of the date of this notification may result in further disciplinary action," one of these letters said.

Brian Moynihan
Brian T. Moynihan, CEO of Bank of America

Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

Morgan Stanley 

Morgan Stanley's new CEO Ted Pick has not commented publicly on the company's remote work policy since taking the role in January 2024. His predecessor, James Gorman, however, was a big proponent of working from the office, telling Bloomberg in 2023 that working from home is "not a choice." 

"They don't get to choose their compensation, they don't get to choose their promotion, they don't get to choose to stay home five days a week," Gorman said in an interview in Davos. 

That said, Morgan Stanley has allowed for some remote work, depending on the job. "At Morgan Stanley, we're kind of business unit by business unit. It's three or four days in the office," Gorman said at the time.

James Gorman
Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman

SAUL LOEB / Getty Images

BlackRock

BlackRock's employees have been making use of its new Hudson Yards headquarters in New York City. 

The world's largest asset manager has required its employees to work in the office four days a week starting in September 2023, with the option to work from home one day a week, BI previously reported.   

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink raises his arm in front of a blue background.
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Citadel 

Citadel's Griffin is a true believer that teams work better and faster when they're in the same room. His $66 billion hedge fund and his market maker, Citadel Securities,  have been full time in the office since June 2021.  

"We make so much money because our competition plays in their pajamas – and that's just been a home run for us," Griffin told Goldman partner Raj Mahajan in an interview for the bank's Talks at GS series in June 2023. 

ken griffin
Ken Griffin of Citadel speaking at the 2019 Milken conference.

Mike Blake/Reuters

Blackstone 

Blackstone employees have been back in the office five days a week since June 2021. 

To make its staff more comfortable with the initial return to office, Blackstone spent $20 million on Covid safety and specific precautions, a source told BI in 2021, including covering cab fares for employees' commute.

Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman in front of a blue background as he visits "Maria Bartiromo's Wall Street" at Fox Business Network Studios on September 18, 2019 in New York City.
Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman

Roy Rochlin/Getty Images

Bridgewater

Bridgewater Associates, the world's largest hedge fund, has kept to a flexible schedule. Since September 2021, the fund has required staff to be in the office a minimum of two days a week. 

 Managers and department heads, however, can require additional days in the office, according to the firm's website. On days employees are in, the firm focuses on taking "advantage of our shared location," it reads. Department heads and managers can require additional days onsite depending on the employee's role and business needs.

headshot of nir bar dea bridgewater deputy CEO
Nir Bar Dea is CEO of Bridgewater Associates.

Courtesy of Bridgewater

Millennium 

Izzy Englander's Millennium experimented with a hybrid working arrangement in 2021. At that time, the firm required its employees to work in the office at least three days a week.

Since then, most employees have been in the office 5 days a week, according to a person familiar with the firm. 

izzy Israel Englander
Israel Englander, chairman and CEO of Millennium Partners

Phil McCarten/Reuters

Read the original article on Business Insider

Before yesterdayMain stream

It's Wall Street bonus season: Here's when the biggest banks are expected to tell employees how much they made

People walking past JP morgan tower outside

Momo Takahashi/BI

  • Wall Street's biggest banks are gearing up to communicate 2024 bonus compensation to staff.
  • Bonuses are expected to be as much as 35% higher as demand for corporate dealmaking grows.
  • Here are the dates banks like JPMorgan and Goldman are expected to tell employees what they made.

Wall Street bonus season is kicking into high gear this week as the biggest banks get ready to tell employees how much they earned in discretionary income.

Morgan Stanley, known for leading social media company Reddit's IPO in March, is expected to start telling employees how much they earned in 2024 bonuses as soon as this week, according to three people with knowledge of the bank's plans. A spokeswoman for Morgan Stanley declined to comment.

Other large banks are scheduled to communicate bonus numbers to staff later this month, including Goldman Sachs as soon as next week and JPMorgan Chase the week after that, people with knowledge of the banks' plans told BI.

From junior analysts to senior bankers, year-end bonuses tend to indicate not only Wall Street workers' own performance in a given year, but also their value to the company. It's common for bankers who feel snubbed with a lowball number to leave for other jobs after their check clears.

Bonuses have been down in recent years after hitting new highs in 2021 due to lackluster demand for mergers and capital raising.

This year, investment bankers and traders are expecting bonuses to tick higher (up as much as 35%, according to comp consultants Johnson Associates) thanks to a bounce in deal flow that's predicted to ramp up this year.

Worldwide M&A was up 11% in 2024 to over $3 billion, according to data from the London Stock Exchange Group. The five biggest banks — JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, and Citi — dominated the league tables last year, led by Goldman Sachs with 30% global market share, followed by Morgan Stanley with 25%, and JPMorgan with 19%. Bank trading revenue also skyrocketed, propelled by rising interest rates and stock volatility.

BI spoke to bank insiders and headhunters to find out when employees of the largest banks are expecting to learn their "number." They said bonus information tends to be closely guarded and that communication dates are subject to change. See when the biggest banks are scheduled to tell staff how much they earned in 2024 bonus money, in chronological order:

Morgan Stanley

Multiple people with knowledge of Morgan Stanley's plans said the investment bank, which ranked No. 2 in M&A last year, will start to share bonus numbers with staff on January 8, making it the first major bank to do so.

Goldman Sachs

Goldman is expected to begin revealing comp on January 15, the same day it reports its 2024 and fourth-quarter earnings, a process that tends to stretch out for several days, a person with knowledge of the announcements told BI.

JPMorgan

The biggest US bank by assets plans to start communicating bonus compensation to employees on January 21, a person familiar with the bank's plans told BI. Employees based in the US will be paid the following week.

Bank of America

Bank of America is aiming to begin communicating bonuses on January 27, a person with knowledge of the announcements told BI. A BofA spokesman declined to comment.

Citi

Bonuses at Citi will be shared in the second half of January, according to a person familiar with the plans, though it isn't clear which day. The bank has been undergoing a massive restructuring since 2021 when CEO Jane Fraser took the reigns.

Read the original article on Business Insider

Rate cuts, strong employment, and lower prices: 5 bullish predictions for 2025 from Goldman Sachs

31 December 2024 at 10:34
Green arrow and stock trader pointing up.

Spencer Platt/Getty Images; Bryan Erickson/Business Insider

  • There are a handful of bullish forces headed for markets and the economy next year.
  • Goldman Sachs said there are five factors providing a tailwind for the market next year.
  • Those include stronger growth, more rate cuts, and lower inflation.

Investors feeling nervous about markets and the economy have a number of reasons to cheer up, with several bullish factors set to keep the rally going next year, according to Goldman Sachs.

Economists at the bank made several predictions for markets and the economy in 2025, some of which buck current expectations.

Some investors are starting to sour on next year's outlook, with over 34% of traders saying they were bearish on stocks over the next six months, according to the AAII's latest investor Sentiment Survey.

Meanwhile, the Conference Board's Expectations Index, a measure of how consumers feel about various parts of the economy, dropped to near-recessionary levels in December.

Yet, a handful of factors could keep the economy going strong or even stronger in 2025.

Here are five bullish calls the bank has made for the coming year.

1. The economy could grow more than expected

The US economy could expand even faster than investors are currently expecting. Goldman Sachs forecast GDP to grow 2.4% year-over-year by the fourth quarter of 2025, above the consensus estimate of 2% growth.

That increase will largely be fueled by strong consumer spending. Americans, bolstered by a strong job market and increased wealth from holding stocks, will likely ramp up their spending by 2.3% on a yearly basis in 2025, Goldman predicted, on par with consumer spending growth seen over the last two years.

2. Business investment will take off

Investment by businesses will probably far surpass expectations, Goldman said. The bank predicted that private investment in the economy would climb 5% year-over-year in the fourth quarter, above consensus estimates of around 3% growth.

Graph showing private investment increase expected in 2025
Private investment growth is expected to solidly beat expectations next year, according to Goldman Sachs.

Goldman Sachs Global Investment Research, Bloomberg

"While the factory-building boom subsidized by the Inflation Reduction Act and CHIPS Act will slow, spending on equipment for those new factories and for artificial intelligence, the reinstatement of tax incentives, rising confidence, and lower short-term borrowing rates for small businesses should fuel roughly 5% growth in business investment," economists said.

3. The job market will strengthen

The employment picture could look a lot stronger in 2025. Unemployment will likely fall back to around 4% by the end of 2025, Goldman predicted, slightly lower than the 4.2% jobless rate recorded in November.

"Job openings remain high and strong final demand growth should keep labor demand growing robustly. Meanwhile, the surge in immigrant labor supply that the labor market struggled to fully absorb this year has already slowed sharply and will fade further," the note added.

4. The Fed will cut rates more than expected

Goldman Sachs is expecting the Fed to cut rates three times next year, with decreases to the fed funds rate coming in March, June, and September. That reflects a slightly more aggressive pace of easing than what investors and Fed officials themselves are expecting, with the latest projections showing the central bank eyeing two rate cuts for 2025.

"Both our baseline and probability-weighted Fed forecasts are more dovish than market pricing, which reflects both our confidence that the underlying inflation trend will continue to decline and our view that the risks for interest rates from policy changes under the second Trump administration are more two-sided than widely assumed," the bank said.

Economists have said that some of Trump's proposed policies, like his plan to levy steep tariffs, could cause inflation to spike and interest rates to rise. Trump implemented tariffs during his first term as president without a significant price increase, but his tariff plan this time around is much broader, explaining the difference in inflation forecasts.

5. Inflation will keep cooling

Price growth, though, will likely continue to decline, Goldman predicted. The bank forecast core personal expenditures inflation —the Fed's preferred measure that excludes volatile food and energy prices — to fall to 2.1% by the end of next year, down from the 2.8% growth recorded in November.

The decline will be partly driven by "catch-up inflation" ending next year, the bank said, referring to how real inflation in the economy often lags behind the official statistics. Areas that typically lag, like car insurance and rent prices, have started to cool in recent months.

Graph showing real time rent prices vs. pce housing data
Official rent inflation figures have started to catch up with real-time rent data.

Goldman Sachs Global Investment Research, Department of Commerce

Wage growth, another factor that influences inflation, is also starting to cool, which should help lower price growth. Wages grew just 3.9% over the last year, down from the recorded 4.7% in 2023, according to Goldman Sachs data.

Goldman remains solidly bullish on stocks going into the new year. Previously, the bank's strategists predicted the S&P 500 could rise to 6,500 by the end of 2025, implying 10% upside from current levels.

Read the original article on Business Insider

10 Goldman executives share the books, speeches, or plays that made them better in 2024

29 December 2024 at 03:00
Goldman Sachs leaders
From left: Goldman Sachs leaders Asahi Pompey, John Waldron, and Padi Raphael

Courtesy of Goldman Sachs

  • 10 Goldman Sachs partners shared the books, speeches, and plays that inspired them this year.
  • President John Waldron recommended a book about Dwight Eisenhower that taught him about leadership.
  • See what 9 other Goldman execs said made them better leaders, industry experts, and humans in 2024.

Goldman Sachs' top brass are revered as some of the sharpest minds on Wall Street — but staying on top of your game takes work.

As 2024 comes to a close, Business Insider asked 10 senior officials of the powerhouse global investment bank — a leader in M&A dealmaking and advice — to share at least one thing they read, watched, or listened to that made them smarter and better at their jobs over the last year.

One Goldman partner recommended a play that helped her think about the long-term impact of her actions. Another partner touted a lecture by a famous philosopher on the importance of organizational trust that can be streamed from Spotify.

As Carey Halio, Goldman's global treasurer, put it, learning is an "endless" pursuit for leaders of the bank, which ranked No. 1 in M&A volumes last year, according to deal tracker LSEG.

"The more you can expand your knowledge base, the better you will be at your core function, the more you will be able to connect the dots and the more effective you will be as a leader," Halio told BI.

Here's what top Goldman executives like President John Waldron, Vice Chair Rob Kaplan, and M&A cohead Stephan Feldgoise shared as their top recommendations from 2024. The responses all come from Goldman partners, the bank's highest rank outside the C-suite. They are in the partners' own words, edited only for length and clarity, and are organized alphabetically by last name.

Jared Cohen
Jared Cohen
Jared Cohen

Courtesy of Goldman Sachs

Title: President of Global Affairs and cohead of the Goldman Sachs Global Institute

Recommendation: "The Guns of August" by Barbara Tuchman and "A Peace to End All Peace" by David Fromkin

Why: Earlier in my career, I found that you couldn't truly understand World War I without reading these books. Now, they help me make sense of the world we're living in. Tuchman offers a sobering reminder of how quickly things can fall apart. Many leaders took peace in Europe for granted in 1914, as they did in 2014 and even 2022, with devastating results. Fromkin is especially worth reading this year after the fall of the brutal Assad regime in Syria. That country's borders emerged in large part as a legacy World War I.

"A Peace to End All Peace" details the history behind the headlines, and it remains a key text for anyone trying to understand one of the world's most challenging but amazing regions.

Stephan Feldgoise
Stephan Feldgoise
Stephan Feldgoise

Courtesy of Goldman Sachs

Title: Cohead of Global M&A

Recommendation: "The Confident Mind" by Dr. Nate Zinsser

Why: Dr. Zinsser teaches performance psychology at West Point, working with members of the military who need to perform and excel in high-stress situations.

I found the concepts around preparation and mental positivity to be useful for me personally but also highly valuable in mentoring and developing the next generation of Goldman Sachs leaders as they move into roles where they face performance challenges in high-stress environments.

Most valuable were the very specific and learnable techniques that can be taught to next-generation leaders to build confidence and improve performance.

Gizelle George-Joseph
Gizelle George-Joseph
Gizelle George-Joseph

Courtesy of Gizelle George-Joseph

Title: COO of Global Investment Research

Recommendation: "The Promise of Leadership," readings curated by the Aspen Institute's Finance Leaders Fellowship

Why: A selection of readings curated by the Aspen Institute's Finance Leaders Fellowship as part of the final week-long intensive seminar had the most significant impact on my leadership this year.

There were many aspects of the readings and the seminar that resonated, including a deep discussion on happiness and what makes for a good life: health, wealth, knowledge, friendship, good moral character – all of it? There was also a heart-wrenching reminder of both the courage and the depravity that can exist in the world through stories of survivors of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, as told by New Yorker writer Paul Gourevitch in the book "We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families."

From the readings, which included works by Frederick Douglas, Wendell Barry, and Mary Oliver, I took away multiple concepts that I continue to contemplate both as a leader and a citizen of the world and these have guided many of my endeavors and decisions this year. My takeaways included the importance of taking action to create change in big and small ways and enjoying the journey of life itself.

Carey Halio
Carey Halio
Carey Halio

Courtesy of Goldman Sachs

Title: Global Treasurer

Recommendation: Speeches by the Federal Reserve Vice Chair Philip Jefferson

Why: This fall, I really enjoyed two speeches by Vice Chair Philip Jefferson from the Federal Reserve on the history of the discount window since it was initially created in 1913, and how it has provided liquidity to the US banking system and broader economy in different environments.

Despite being someone who has been a student of the banking industry for over 25 years, I learned new points that help me think about our approach to the discount window today. It was a good reminder to not only constantly seek out information but to look at history as a tool for understanding the path in front of you.

I am a firm believer that you can always learn more about your industry and your area of expertise – it is truly endless. The more you can expand your knowledge base, the better you will be at your core function, the more you will be able to connect the dots, and the more effective you will be as a leader. While this example is unique to my work, I think the theme applies more universally.

And, if you are interested in banking, I highly recommend this speech and this speech.

Rob Kaplan
Rob Kaplan
Rob Kaplan

Courtesy of Rob Kaplan

Title: Vice Chairman

Recommendation: "War" by Bob Woodward

Why: I have always been interested in learning about how leaders operate under highly ambiguous and stressful conditions. Whether it is Woodward, William Manchester, or David Halberstam, authors who explore leadership actions in difficult situations that changed the course of history can provide compelling lessons on decision-making under pressure.

Making one decision versus another, having even a slight misunderstanding, or making a seemingly minor miscalculation can cause mistakes that may look innocuous at the time but can have a lasting impact.

Ericka Leslie
Ericka Leslie
Ericka Leslie

Courtesy of Goldman Sachs

Title: COO of Global Banking & Markets

Recommendation: "Trust the Universe," a lecture by Alan Watts

Why: Throughout my career, I have found the philosopher Alan Watts to be particularly inspiring as I think about how to lead different organizations and functions. I regularly revisit his famous lecture "Trust the Universe" on Spotify and recommend it to my colleagues each year. He argues that most people fail to trust the organization they are in and try to control it, which eventually leads to failure.

If you trust the system, as long as you believe in it, then your ability to get the most out of other people to scale and grow your business is greatly enhanced. Through trust and delegated authority, businesses can grow, and organizations can scale. This idea is borrowed from the way the human body operates, and he presents it as a more natural way to create meaningful impact in an organization.

These lessons are both timeless and universal and something I try to integrate into my work every day.

Asahi Pompey
Asahi Pompey
Asahi Pompey

Courtesy of Goldman Sachs

Title: Global Head of Corporate Engagement and Chair of the Urban Investment Group at Goldman Sachs

Recommendation: "Good Bones," a show by the playwright James Ijames

Why: I saw "Good Bones" at the Public Theater — not once, but twice — because it was that compelling. The play explores the complexities of urban renewal projects, asking essential questions like: Who belongs in a neighborhood, and who benefits from its evolution?

The work my team and I lead is centered on creating durable, lasting economic progress, with over $20 billion deployed in community development projects like affordable housing. "Good Bones" was a welcome reminder that as investors, we should never lose sight of the history and the voice of a community — to build long-term trust, and ultimately, to deliver sustainable impact.

When it comes to running a team and leading an organization, the same ideas are at play. Building and managing relationships with honesty and empathy, especially during times of change, creates a foundation of collective resilience, which is essential for the long-term success of an organization.

Padi Raphael
Padi Raphael
Padi Raphael

Courtesy of Goldman Sachs

Title: Global head of Third Party Wealth Management in Goldman Sachs Asset Management

Recommendation: "The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution" by Gregory Zuckerman

Why: One book I read this year that stands out to me is "The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution" by Gregory Zuckerman, a compelling biography of a titan of the hedge fund industry. Jim's story underscores the value of being the very best at what you do by finding a niche in which your skills and perspective can uniquely position you to win.

Producing consistent alpha in investing can be a notoriously difficult undertaking, and the book narrates a masterclass in resilience, painting a picture of Jim's extraordinary successes following early hardships in launching his career.

Two themes that resonated with me as a leader were perseverance in the face of challenges and a lifelong love of learning. In his own immortal words: "work with the smartest people you can, hopefully smarter than you...be persistent, don't give up easily. Be guided by beauty...". The book is a highly engaging read, and I devoured it in one sitting!

John Waldron
John Waldron
John Waldron

Courtesy of Goldman Sachs

Title: President & COO

Recommendation: "Eisenhower: The White House Years" by Jim Newton

Why: I spend a lot of time thinking about risk and how to steer our organization through today's geopolitical crosscurrents, so I went looking for inspiration and found it in Jim Newton's book, "Eisenhower: The White House Years."

Although Newton covers the entirety of Eisenhower's life, he focuses on Ike's two terms as president, which are largely remembered as eight torpid years of peace and prosperity, though, as Newton points out, there was nothing ho-hum about them. Eisenhower inherited not only a hot war on the Korean peninsula, but also a Cold War with the Soviet Union, whose tensions erupted in Iran, Vietnam, Guatemala, Taiwan, Hungary, the Suez Canal, Lebanon, Cuba, the Congo.

It is a sign of Eisenhower's success that those perilous years are now remembered as the days of "Leave It to Beaver," and yet he was still human. He wasn't immediately sympathetic to the cause of civil rights, though when push came to shove during the Little Rock crisis of 1957, he did send in the National Guard to enforce court-ordered desegregation. He also advocated for and oversaw the establishment of the Interstate Highway System, which laid the foundation for years of robust economic growth.

He was a man who wasn't afraid to compromise and who always took the long view. Not a bad example for other leaders to follow.

Tucker York
Tucker York
Tucker York

Courtesy of Goldman Sachs

Title: Global Head of Wealth Management

Recommendation: "Leadership by the Good Book" by David L. Steward

Why: Each year, I keep a list of the books I've read, who recommended them to me, and any takeaways or lessons that I took from the reading. One that stood out this year was "Leadership by the Good Book" by David L. Steward. David gave me the book during his visit to Goldman Sachs this fall as he was the keynote speaker at our inaugural Garland Summit.

While the book suggests biblical lessons appropriate for the business world, the wisdom is non-denominational. David and his coauthor, Brandon Mann, delve into the themes of servant leadership, loving what you do, investing in your people, risking your reputation for what's right, growing through external challenges, and celebrating milestones on the journey. I saw clear parallels to our work in serving clients, risk management, and mentoring our people.

Regardless of one's religious affiliation, the applied learnings are relevant for the business world and the guidance applies to my work at Goldman Sachs.

Read the original article on Business Insider

Here's everything we know about how Wall Street banks are embracing AI

Photos of J.P. Morgan, Citi, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley

Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images; Getty Images; BI

  • Wall Street banks are proving that generative AI is here to stay and the tech is not just a fad.
  • Business Insider has reported on how some of finance's biggest banks are approaching generative AI.
  • See how giants like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan are weaving the tech into the fabric of their firms.

Wall Street bank leaders say generative AI is here to stay, and they're weaving the technology throughout the fabric of their banks to make sure.

From trading to payments to marketing, it's hard to find a corner of the banking industry that isn't claiming to use AI.

In fact, the technology's impact, made mainstream by OpenAI's ChatGPT in late-2022, is becoming cultural. Generative AI is changing what it takes to be a software developer and how to stand out as a junior banker, especially as banks begin dispatching autonomous AI agents. The technology is even changing roles in the c-suite.

From supercharging productivity via AI-powered search engines to figuring out the best way banks can realize a return on their AI investments, here's what we know about how Wall Street banks are embracing AI.

JPMorgan Chase
Jamie Dimon
JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon is a "tremendous" user of the bank's generative AI suite. We have the story of how he and other execs use AI at the bank.

Dimon also laid out his vision for how America's largest bank will win the AI battle against fintechs through data. Meet the leaders of that mission.

Mary Erdoes, the boss of JPM's asset- and wealth-management business, used these slides to outline how she wants to get her people ready for the "AI of the future."

Manuela Veloso has been focused on AI for decades. The former head of machine learning at Carnegie Mellon University, Veloso has been JPMorgan's head of AI research since 2018. She broke down seven main challenges her team is trying to solve with AI for the bank.

Goldman Sachs
A bald man in a suit smiles
Goldman Sachs' David Solomon

Michael Kovac

Goldman's top partners and CEO David Solomon are eager to see AI rev up their businesses. From realizing internal productivity gains to capturing more business as clients look to raise money in anticipation of AI development and acquisitions, here's what the top echelon is expecting.

There is no AI without data, and there is no data strategy at Goldman without its chief data officer, Neema Raphael. Raphael gave BI an inside look at how his roughly 500-person team melds with the rest of the bank to get the most out of its data.

AI's impact has ripple effects that go far beyond technology. Goldman's chief information officer, Marco Argenti, predicts that cultural change will be critical to getting the bank to 100% adoption.

Many dollars are being spent on Wall Street's AI ambitions. But how do you measure the return on the investment? Argenti offers some tips on the calculus that can help firms prioritize where to invest.

Morgan Stanley
Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman, wearing a black suit and red tie, smiles in front of a blue backdrop.
Morgan Stanley's James Gorman

Brendan McDermid/Reuters

Morgan Stanley wants to turn employees' AI ideas into a reality. Here's an exclusive look at that process.

Morgan Stanley's wealth division is getting an AI facelift. See how the technology is transforming the jobs of the bank's 16,000 financial advisors.

Thanks to its partnership with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, Morgan Stanley has ramped up its AI efforts. The exec in charge of tech partnerships and firmwide innovation opened up about how it all started.

Citi
Citi CEO Jane Fraser in front of some American flags wearing a fuchsia top.
Citi's Jane Fraser

NICHOLAS KAMM/Getty Images

Citi's top tech executive, Shadman Zafar, outlined the bank's four-phased AI strategy and how it will "change how we work for decades to come."

Bank of America
Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan
Bank of America's Brian Moynihan

John Lamparski/Getty Images

Bank of America's chief experience officer, Rob Pascal, details how the bank's internal-facing AI assistant helps bankers collect, record, and review client data. Here are all the ways it's helping employees be more effective and efficient.

How Bank of America is using an AI-powered tool to help its bankers prep for client meetings more efficiently

AI hits the investment bank
Image of people walking
Wall Street investment banks prepare for an AI future.

Momo Takahashi/BI

Investment bankers are hopeful that corporate America's obsession with AI could kick off a new era of mergers, acquisitions, and IPOs. From execs stepping into recently created roles to accommodate the sector to industry veterans launching their own AI-focused M&A-advisory firm, meet 11 investment bankers poised to lead Wall Street's AI revolution.

We spoke with four of those AI bankers about why 2025 is going to be all about AI pickaxes and shovels rather than pure-play AI deals.

AI could save junior bankers time by automating tedious tasks known all too well by Wall Street's youngest ranks. But it can also make it harder to break into the industry by shifting the skills required for entry.

A former Goldman Sachs managing director built an AI-powered networking tool to spur dealmaking. The budding startup, Louisa AI, already has a few clients, including Goldman Sachs, Insight Partners, and a global exchange.

Here's how former investment bankers left their Wall Street jobs to build an AI startup to solve junior bankers' woes.

Read the original article on Business Insider

Wall Street titans like David Kostin, Rick Rieder, Mike Wilson, and Rob Arnott tell BI their best career advice

27 December 2024 at 02:00
Rick Rieder, Wei Li, David Kostin
 

CNBC, BlackRock, Brendan McDermid/Reuters

  • Navigating a career can be challenging, especially at the start.
  • BI asked senior Wall Street leaders for their best pieces of advice for climbing the ranks.
  • Interviewees hold top positions at Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, BlackRock, and more.

What does it take to get to the top? Well, who better to ask than those who are already there?

Navigating a career can be challenging, especially in a rapidly changing economy. But those in senior leadership roles on Wall Street have cracked that code, climbing the ranks through their decades of experience.

Because these top Wall Street money managers, economists, and strategists are among those best-positioned to offer career advice, BI asked them in recent interviews for the top pieces of wisdom they would pass along to those just starting out.

David Kostin, chief US equity strategist at Goldman Sachs
David Kostin

Brendan McDermid/Reuters

Takeaway: Prioritize going to the office

"Show up in the office," Kostin said. "I can't imagine how a young person is going to actually absorb all the dimensionality of what's happening in the client relationships and with their work and colleagues and not be in the office."

Kostin's advice is simple, but it comes at a time when a massive debate is raging about various companies' RTO policies. In Kostin's view, working in person is critical to developing your career early on.

Mike Wilson, CIO and chief US equity strategist at Morgan Stanley
Mike Wilson is Morgan Stanley's chief investment officer and chief US equity strategist.
Mike Wilson is Morgan Stanley's chief investment officer and chief US equity strategist.

Morgan Stanley

Takeaway: Bet on yourself, and be OK with being wrong

"You've got to be willing to go take a stand on stuff, whether it's in a meeting, with people you report to, pointing out things that you don't agree with, kind of making a firm stance," Wilson said.

Wilson says this boils down to being open to taking on "personal risk," or the chance that the argument you're making could be wrong — or right.

"On Wall Street, personal risk often means taking contrarian views because that's where the real money is made and accepting the idea that you're going to be wrong along the way. I think ultimately how you deal with those consequences will determine whether you're successful or not," he added.

Rick Rieder, CIO of global fixed income at BlackRock
BlackRock's Rick Rieder and CNBC's Delivering Alpha Conference on September 28, 2023.
BlackRock's Rick Rieder and CNBC's Delivering Alpha Conference on September 28, 2023.

CNBC

Takeaway: Understand how technology is trending

As the biggest firms in the world pour money into AI development, Rieder said that those who are early in their careers should think about how the economy might look in the years ahead as robotics and AI increasingly augment our lives.

"I think the world's changing faster than anybody really recognizes," Rieder, who oversees $3 trillion, said.

"For young people today, understand where that's going to happen and how you take advantage of that — I think it's a really, really big deal," he continued. "I think we've left status quo, and we're moving to a whole new era."

Anna Wong, chief US economist at Bloomberg Economics
Anna Wong

Anna Wong

Takeaway: Be curious despite consensus, and come to a conclusion only after stress-testing it

"Constantly being curious, even if there might not be an obvious payoff to it," Wong, who previously worked at the Federal Reserve, said for her first piece of advice. "If investing is about finding what the market has not priced in, then what people have not priced in usually are in the details. For me, I have learned to be attuned to that little voice inside my head that sounds a tiny alarm in cases where I am about to make some broad assumptions."

Second, when it comes to forecasting, Wong said to consider if a conclusion is still valid after considering multiple arguments and points of view.

"The way I decide on whether to make an out-of-consensus call is to see whether it's possible to arrive at a forecast in many different ways," she said. "Most times I take as the forecast the middle of those ways — and that could at times be totally out of consensus, and at times be smack in the middle of consensus."

One of Wong's current out-of-consensus calls is that there's a 60% chance the US economy is headed toward or already in a recession.

Michael Feroli, chief US economist at JPMorgan
Headshot of Michael Feroli

JPMorgan

Takeaway: Treat every job as a learning opportunity, even if it's not what you see yourself doing long-term

Landing your dream job at the very start of your professional life is a rare occurrence. More often than not, you may find yourself at a job that isn't a great fit or isn't aligned with your long-term goals.

However, there's a lot to be learned while figuring out your career. "Do your hardest at the job you're currently at, even if it's not the job you love," Feroli said. "Whatever you're doing now will help you get to where you want to be."

Rob Arnott, founder of Research Affiliates
Rob Arnott
Rob Arnott is the founder and chairman of Research Affiliates.

Research Affiliates LLC

Takeaway: Enjoy what you do, and challenge widely accepted beliefs

"First piece of advice: Do what you love," Arnott said. "Because if you don't do what you love, you probably won't be very good at it. And if you do what you love, you're going to have fun even if you're not wildly successful."

He continued: "Second: Never accept conventional wisdom as true. Always be curious. I've made a career out of listening to conventional wisdom and thinking, 'Gosh, has anyone tested that?' And I go and test it, and half the time it turns out to be true — and fine — and half the time it turns out to be a myth."

Invesco, PIMCO, and Charles Schwab all use Arnott's alternative indexes as the bases of various mutual funds and ETFs they offer. Arnott recently told BI that market consensus around AI could be too bullish, and large-cap growth stocks may be in for a rough patch.

Wei Li, global chief investment strategist at BlackRock
This is a headshot of Wei Li
Wei Li, global chief investment strategist, BlackRock Investment Institute

BlackRock

Takeaway: Take time to explore interests outside of work

It may seem counterintuitive, but the key to Li's career success has been making time for new experiences outside work.

"Don't only spend time on the things immediately useful to you in your seat right now," Li said. "The world is so unpredictable. Other things you could absorb may end up being helpful to you in ways that you don't even know."

Hobbies that she's picked up over the years, such as learning about cryptocurrency or studying Italian, have opened doors in her life that she could not have foreseen.

Li believes having diverse experiences is especially important in a post-AI world: "These days, I really force myself to experience things that have nothing to do with my job because it trains my brain in ways that my job doesn't. Who knows, it could become useful in the future and in an environment where we just don't know where the future is," she said.

Read the original article on Business Insider

Drug testing at big banks, from Bank of America to JPMorgan

26 December 2024 at 11:05
Woman smoking marijuana joint
TK

Mayara Klingner, EyeEm/Getty Images

  • BI asked the largest US investment banks if they test for marijuana and other drugs.
  • NY prohibits employers from testing many job seekers for marijuana.
  • Drug testing on Wall Street is not dead, however. See the policies and exceptions here.

Laws and attitudes around drugs are swiftly shifting, which can create confusion for job seekers. Is medical marijuana OK to use at work if you have a prescription? What drugs can you be tested when applying for a new job?

In New York, the financial capital of the United States, recreational cannabis use is now legal for people over age 21, and testing job seekers for marijuana in the Empire State has been largely outlawed.

That doesn't mean that drug testing on Wall Street is dead, however. Indeed, many large banks have strict rules against using substances at work, including unsanctioned alcohol. And while NY-based employers are prohibited from testing most job seekers for marijuana, they can still test for other drugs and discipline workers for being impaired on the job by drugs, including cannabis.

BI reached out to six large banks, including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Citi, to ask about their drug testing policies. We found that, for the most part, these employers no longer screen most job applicants for drugs of any kind.

That said, these banks still have the right to test for drugs, including marijuana, under certain circumstances, including when federal or state law requires it as a mandate of the position or when someone shows signs of being impaired on the job.

Bank of America reserves the right to screen for drugs when legally required, according terms and conditions of employment posted on its website. JPMorgan Chase, meanwhile, may require suppliers to test personnel who work with the bank for amphetamines, cocaine, opiates, and phencyclidine, according to documents posted on its website.

Like it or not, drugs have long been a mainstay of Wall Street culture. While cocaine has been largely replaced by softer uppers, like Adderall and Zyn, the intense demands of the finance industry can often lead to drug use, as Business Insider has previously reported.

See what we learned about drug testing for job seekers and current employees at Citi, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and more.

Bank of America
People walk past doors with the Bank of America logo
Bank of America

VIEW press/Corbis via Getty Images

A spokesperson for the Charlotte, North Carolina-headquartered bank said the firm does not require new hires or current employees to test for drug use.

Documents posted on the company's website show that it may screen for drugs in select circumstances. One document, for example, says employees may be asked to "agree to undergo a screening for illegal drugs prior to or during my employment with Bank of America if requested or as legally required." A positive test may "render me ineligible for employment at Bank of America."

The drug policy posted on the bank's website says that the use or even possession of illicit drugs during work hours can lead to termination.

Citigroup
A man walks down the street next to a Citi sign
Citigroup logo

Mike Kemp/In Pictures via Getty Images

Citi also doesn't require drug testing as a condition of employment, a bank spokesperson said. This goes for both new hires and existing employees.

BI reported in 2019 that Citigroup was reevaluating its stance on testing job applicants for marijuana use. The bank also held high-level discussions among senior executives about how closely it should work with the cannabis industry or clients interested in doing cannabis deals.

Goldman Sachs
david solomon
David Solomon, CEO of Goldman Sachs.

Reuters / Shannon Stapleton

A spokesperson for Goldman Sachs told BI that the bank does not test new hires or current employees for marijuana or other substances.

Goldman's policy is a switch from 2019 when a Goldman spokesperson told BI the bank drug tests new hires, though the screening process did not include marijuana.

JPMorgan
Jamie Dimon
Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan.

Getty/Win McNamee

A spokesperson for JPMorgan Chase declined to comment on the bank's drug-testing policies.

A 2021 document obtained by BI showed that JPMorgan may test its supplier's employees, at the supplier's expense, at a Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) certified site. This includes personnel who "work at a site of any JPMC and receive a JPMC identification access badge" or who have access to the bank's confidential information, networks or systems, or customer property, the document says.

Morgan Stanley
The Morgan Stanley headquarters building in Times Square.
The Morgan Stanley headquarters in Times Square.

Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

A Morgan Stanley spokesperson told BI that the bank does not test employees or new hires for any substances.

Wells Fargo
A woman walks in front of the Wells Fargo building in San Francisco
Wells Fargo in San Francisco

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Wells Fargo does not require new hires or current employees to screen for marijuana or other drugs, a spokesperson told BI. "Drug testing is not part of our pre-employment eligibility review," the spokesperson wrote.

That said, Wells Fargo's online policy calls for a "drug-free workplace," including the improper use of legal substances. "All employees are required to perform their job duties unimpaired by illegal drugs, marijuana, alcohol, or the improper use of legal substances," the policy states, adding: "Employees are prohibited from working or reporting to work when impaired by alcohol or drugs."

Read the original article on Business Insider

Inside the rise of Wall Street's distinguished engineers and technical fellows

26 December 2024 at 02:00
People looking out with the wall street sign.

Getty Images; Jenny Chang-Rodriguez/BI

  • Distinguished engineers and technical fellows are among the highest-level technologists in banking.
  • They are selected through an extensive process that highlights technical prowess and influence.
  • BI discussed the the program with execs from Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.

Every two years, a selective group of Morgan Stanley's elite technologists open their ranks to welcome a new crop of distinguished engineers.

This month, the existing distinguished engineers at the firm themselves selected their 19 newest members after a rigorous half-a-year vetting process. The group, now made up of 78 employees from across the firm, represents the top 0.3% of technologists at Morgan Stanley.

"Anywhere we're making those core decisions at the center of tech, you can almost guarantee that all or some portion of the DEs are involved in those decision processes," Michael Pizzi, head of US banks and head of technology at Morgan Stanley, told Business Insider.

Goldman Sachs, meanwhile, last month announced its class of 111 technical fellows, representing the top 3% of engineers at the bank. They specialize in specific domains, and are often tapped to work on some of the firm's trickiest technical issues.

Goldman Chief Technology Officer John Madsen remembers assembling an A-team of about 10 technical fellows a few years ago to make upgrades to an important system that was about to max out on its capacity, he said, declining to specify which business the system supported. "These kinds of moments often go unnoticed by the bulk of the firm, but they highlight the exact value this community brings to Goldman Sachs," Madsen told BI.

At JPMorgan, distinguished engineers represent the highest level of engineer, and includes the likes of Marco Pistoia, who leads applied research on cutting-edge technologies like quantum computing, and William Patrick Opet, the bank's global chief information security officer.

Outside of banking, the technical distinction is picking up traction. Ken Griffin's market maker, Citadel Securities, hired its first technical fellow this year, and BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, introduced its inaugural class in 2021.

While it's usually the rainmakers, investors, and traders who take the spotlight on Wall Street, there's a growing group of technologists whose influence is taking center stage as technology is increasingly viewed as a competitive advantage.

Call them distinguished engineers or technical fellows (depending on the firm), they're who bank leaders go to with their thorniest and most challenging technical problems. They also help put into effect and execute the longer-term firm-wide tech strategy set out by C-suites. For many engineers, it's a dream and one of the highest technical designations in the business.

BI spoke with some of the newly minted distinguished engineers, a long-time tech fellow, and the executives running these programs to find out what they do, how they influence the wider tech strategy, and to get an inside look at the vetting process.

"I wanted it more than anything"

Some of the first tech fellows on Wall Street were at Goldman Sachs, whose program dates back to 2004. Miruna Stratan still remembers the call when she was told she had made it.

"I remember I wanted it more than anything," Stratan told BI of the program that celebrates technologists in a way that was historically reserved for rainmakers and business leaders.

Now, she is a top tech exec within Goldman's lucrative investment-banking division and is one of just four partner-level tech fellows at the firm. The distinction is highly sought after by Goldman's technical population, she said, and the bank even hosts presentations to demystify what it means to be a tech fellow.

Part of the allure is being able to show off your technical chops. But being a tech fellow also means you can shape the firm through your engineering solutions, Stratan said.

"The tech fellows at Goldman Sachs have been at the center of all the major business transformations through technology since the program began. From grid compute and virtual desktops to cloud and data lakes, and now, of course, with AI," she said of previous technology waves.

It's a similar story at Morgan Stanley, where distinguished engineers are expected to spend 15% to 20% of their time on enterprise-level problems, not unit-specific problems, Pizzi said. That additional responsibility, which doesn't necessarily come with a raise or promotion, is actually a plus for many engineers in the program.

"We can help to make some firm-wide decisions in technology and make sure we are moving in the right direction," said Ken Zhang, one of Morgan Stanley's newest DEs and one of the brains behind the bank's generative AI tool, AskResearch.

Fang Song, another newly minted Morgan Stanley DE and executive director in the enterprise computing group, referred to her peers as "technical influencers" who make widely impacting decisions on reusable technology blueprints that are used across departments.

What makes a distinguished engineer or technical fellow?

At Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, distinguished engineers and technical fellows cannot apply for the designation. They must be nominated by senior management or existing TFs and DEs.

While engineering excellence is at the heart of being a DE and TF, it's not the only thing candidates are judged on.

At Morgan Stanley, Pizzi said contributing to the firm's technical reputation externally is important, whether it involves writing technical books and white papers or holding patents. The bank's DEs hold one third of the patents the bank has generated, he added.

Goldman Sachs judges candidates on how they nurture the broader technology population. Stratan said she remembers and keeps in touch with her mentors, who taught her "how to be a senior engineer and how to think through complex problems."

"A very important piece is mentoring and coaching," Stratan said. "Basically the tech fellows are coaching the next generation of tech talent at the firm."

Read the original article on Business Insider

Wall Street headhunters are gearing up for a 'bonkers' hiring market in 2025 — here's what to expect

A man in a suit walks down the street
Some Wall Street bankers expect a return of 2021's deluge of dealmaking next year. Headhunters are feeling the pressure to help them staff up.

Momo Takahashi/BI

  • 2025 is expected to be a robust year for mergers and acquisitions as well as IPOs.
  • Consequently, some investment banks are bulking up on hiring, industry recruiters say.
  • Here's a look at which firms are staffing up and what sectors are seeing the most action.

When John Weinberg, the chairman and CEO of the elite boutique investment bank Evercore, sat down for a fireside chat in December at an annual Goldman Sachs conference, he revealed that his firm had been ramping up hiring.

"Most of the time, you don't really do much recruiting in November or December," he told listeners — adding that this year had been different. "If you could see my schedule, you'd see that virtually every day I am speaking with and recruiting" new talent, he said. "You could probably anticipate that our recruiting efforts will increase, not decrease."

Weinberg isn't the only Wall Street dealmaker for whom recruiting is top of mind. According to industry headhunters, hiring across the Street has been gaining steam.

"We're probably up 60% to 70%," Kevin Mahoney, a managing partner in the global financial-services practice at Christoph Zeiss Partners, told Business Insider in December. "We haven't been this busy in a long time," he added, saying he expects 2025 to be "bonkers" in terms of hiring volumes.

After several years of lackluster deal activity, Wall Street is finally starting to see signs of a thaw in mergers and public offerings. A cocktail of lower interest rates, pent-up demand, and expectations for a friendlier landscape under a Trump presidency has left many dealmakers across the Street feeling bullish about the prospects for 2025. Robert Stowe, the head of Americas equity capital markets at Barclays, told BI that he predicted some $50 billion in initial public offering volumes in the US next year. That would be a roughly 20% increase from 2024's just over $41 billion worth of IPO volumes in the Americas, as recorded by the deal-tracking firm Dealogic.

BI got an update on the latest investment-banking hiring trends from three top Wall Street headhunters: Mahoney; Meridith Dennes, the managing partner of the firm Prospect Rock; and Brianne Sterling, the head of the investment-banking recruiting practice at Selby Jennings.

Dennes said the industry's "musical chairs" could start to spike in about January or February after bankers receive their bonuses. Many, she said, have gotten early hints about their bonus numbers this year and are privately grumbling.

"Bonuses are not coming out as strong as we expected them to be, and I think the reason is because there's been so much hiring at the senior level and at the MD level," she said. "A lot of that compensation pool may be spoken for."

So, with moves on the way, which sectors will see the most activity? Here are a few key trends the headhunters say are worth watching in 2025.

The hot sectors

Banks big and small are already dialing up recruiting for their technology, media, and telecommunications teams, known as TMT in Wall Street parlance.

One reason, Mahoney said, is that those sectors are popular acquisition targets for financial sponsors. Indeed, private-equity firms are itching to deploy the billions they've raised from limited partners — but have been waiting for interest rates to decline.

"Something that I think will be interesting within the tech space, as well, is how teams are looking at staffing and positioning" for AI deals, as well as deals for cryptocurrency and digital-assets companies that may consolidate over the next year, Sterling of Selby Jennings said.

Tech has been a major area for banker movement, said Dennes, who also named healthcare, restructuring, industrials, consumer retail, and financial institutions as hot. Among some of the early findings of Prospect Rock's annual compensation survey, bankers in tech and restructuring displayed the highest levels of dissatisfaction with pay.

"Now, if they're not really paid," Dennes said, "they're going to want to jump — and there's opportunity for those folks to jump."

Tech dealmakers on the move

Union Square Advisors, a boutique technology-focused investment bank in San Francisco, has onboarded a series of dealmakers recently, including tapping Terry Jackson — who previously worked at JPMorgan and Bank of America Securities — as a managing director. The firm also hired Todd Meadow to pitch in with sponsor coverage and brought on the banker Chris Appaneal to focus on software for governance, risk, and compliance.

Houlihan Lokey, a midsize firm long respected for its prowess in restructuring and distressed deals, has also been growing its wallet share in tech to win competitive M&A mandates.

In the spring, the bank appointed Ryan Lund as a cohead of US technology. It's been deepening the granularity of its software coverage with subsequent hires, as well — like Nana Kyei, a managing director who joined from Jefferies this fall and focuses on education tech. Geoff Rhizor joined the tech team in San Francisco in late summer; his coverage, in part, intersects with the fintech group.

Barclays has also emphasized hiring managing directors focused on tech and healthcare deals, a company spokesperson told BI. Rob Patterson, who serves as head of data and information platforms coverage within tech investment banking, came over from Morgan Stanley. And the bank appointed David King, a former top-level banker at Bank of America, as global head of technology mergers and acquisitions last summer.

Big banks are staffing up

Some banks have already initiated widespread recruiting plans for juniors.

JPMorgan Chase, for instance, was engaged in a vigorous off-cycle recruiting spree for junior investment bankers as deal flow picked up speed in the fall, according to industry sources and postings on its job board.

Goldman Sachs' careers portal recently displayed roughly a dozen openings for junior bankers in New York, San Francisco, and London. Vacancies included analyst and associate positions in coverage groups like financial institutions, entertainment banking, TMT, and industrials, as well as product-focused functions like equity capital markets.

Bankers need fresh blood: 'Send them our way'

The last time there was an M&A boom during the pandemic, in 2021, many banks were caught unprepared and understaffed, resulting in complaints from overworked junior bankers.

Wall Street employers now say they won't make the same mistake twice — and many are eyeing boosting their junior ranks in preparation, the recruiters said.

Dennes expects an emphasis on associates and midlevel vice presidents to help juggle the ins and outs of executing the manifold deals coming down the pike. "Experienced bankers are always in demand," she said. "Anyone who has closed a couple of deals and is able to train junior staff is very valuable."

Dennes' firm, Prospect Rock, is working on filling four analyst roles, six associate roles, and two VP roles, postings on its website showed. Still, she doesn't see 2025 hiring following the same frenetic pattern it did during the earlier pandemic-era M&A boom.

"In 2021, you just needed bodies — more horsepower. This is very different," she said. Now, banks are markedly more vigilant in emphasizing quality over quantity. "Nobody wants a 2021, 2022 redo," she added. "A lot of those hires were not strong."

Some senior dealmakers are already worried about short-staffing. A managing director at a Wall Street bank told BI he was confident that 2025 would deliver a volume of work comparable with 2021 levels, if perhaps not the same soaring valuations.

"Part of the conversation that we're going to have to think through is augmenting the team at the midlevel" to handle execution, he said. In this hiring market, though, "it's almost impossible" to find impressive associates or VPs, he cautioned. "Send them our way — because it's hard."

Are you an investment-banking insider, or do you have knowledge of industry moves on Wall Street? Get in touch with these reporters. Reed Alexander can be reached via email at [email protected] or via the encrypted messaging app Signal at 561-247-5758. Emmalyse Brownstein can be reached at [email protected] or via Signal at 305-857-5516.

Correction: December 20, 2024 — An earlier version of this story misstated Meridith Dennes' role at Prospect Rock. She's the firm's managing partner, not one of its managing directors.

Read the original article on Business Insider

Here are the deals the 'AI arms race' could drive in 2025, according to 4 bankers from Goldman Sachs, BofA, and Axom Partners

13 December 2024 at 01:50
A composite of headshots of four men wearing suits
Goldman Sachs' Jung Min, Bank of America's Neil Kell, Axom Partners' Brandon Hightower and Alan Bressers

Goldman Sachs; Bank of America; Axom Partners

  • Macroeconomic signs, like lower interest rates and a new administration, point to a rise in M&A.
  • Bankers anticipate more AI dealmaking to benefit data and infrastructure companies.
  • Execs from Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and Axom Partners outline their 2025 predictions.

AI offers the promise of a dealmaking gold rush in years to come, and investment bankers are looking to cash in on deals involving data and infrastructure companies selling the proverbial pickaxes and shovels.

"Everybody's rightly caught up in the lore of AI and what the industry leaders are doing regarding building out platforms, but people forget; unless you have good data management and good data integrity, you can't fully deploy any application of AI," said Neil Kell, Bank of America's chair and global head of technology, media, and telecom for equity-capital markets. "Companies that are looking to be acquisitive are focused on this," he said.

Brandon Hightower, a founder and partner at the tech-focused M&A advisory firm Axom Partners, attributes an increase in AI-themed deals to "an arms race" earlier this year around infrastructure and talent.

Those are two themes that are expected to see continued momentum, according to interviews with four AI bankers. Tech companies focusing on managing, moving, and securing data will be at the forefront of the AI M&A wave. Other "pickaxe and shovel" companies include those focusing on developer tools and resource optimization. AI dealmaking is also poised to touch non-technology sectors, like customer service, commerce, and industrials.

While there hasn't been a lot of dealmaking activity among pure-play generative AI companies, tens of billions have been spent on technology companies that are building infrastructure around AI like storage, server, cloud, and software companies, according to Scott Denne, a principal research analyst at S&P Global Market Intelligence.

In 2024, some $82 billion was spent on AI- and AI-related acquisitons, up from about $55 billion in 2023, according to data from 451 Research, an arm of S&P Global Market Intelligence. This includes purchases of companies selling AI products or products built with AI, as well as companies that sell software, hardware, and other tech to support AI development and deployments.

There are several reasons the timing may be right for companies to shop around. Lower interest rates have reduced the cost of borrowing. The gap between buyer and seller price expectations is shrinking as companies, AI ones included, reset their valuations. Election uncertainty is behind us, and president-elect Trump's pick of Andrew Ferguson to run the Federal Trade Commission is looking like a positive for Big Tech, according to Wedbush Securities.

Ferguson was tapped "at a key time in the AI arms race in which we expect the strong to get stronger as Mag 7 gets the engines started up again on M&A," Wedbush analysts wrote in a note to clients Wednesday.

All eyes on data

Because generative AI is still relatively nascent, bankers are focused on the raw ingredients that are critical to AI models'success.

"Two of the most interesting areas to watch next year will be data infrastructure, management, and analytics companies. The second is developer tools," Jung Min, the co-COO of Goldman Sachs' TMT division, told BI.

Also important is data security, according to Bank of America's Kell, which he said continues to be very relevant and vital for those companies thinking about M&A.

Eventually, the front-facing application layer will be the biggest area, he said. But "in that creation phase, the infrastructure and the developer tools, those are the things that really matter first" after the models are trained, Min said.

That's because companies are trying to figure out "how to get better quality data" and "more efficient flows of data," Axom's Hightower said.

It's something even the biggest AI companies are opening their wallets for. When Axom worked on the sale of database analystics firm Rockset to OpenAI earlier this year, the deal came down to enabling faster data retrieval and improving the data pipeline, according to Axom cofounder Alan Bressers.

The focus on data infrastructure is spotlights two big-data giants Databricks and Snowflake, which respectively have made a handful of acquisitions related to data and AI this year.

"If you have data and if you own the models, those are two key components. How do I bring those together? And if you've got Databricks and Snowflake holding a lot of enterprise data, that's a natural place for a future winner in the AI world," he said.

Optimizing the back end

A need to scale is also driving tech companies to acquire infrastructure players, Axom's Hightower said. He pointed to Nvidia's purchase of Seattle-based OctoAI, a deal that Axom worked on "so that it can scale and do certain aspects of AI workflows in a more efficient manner," he said. It's at least Nvidia's second acquisition this year with an eye toward scalability.

Earlier this year, Nvidia set out to buy Run:ai. The deal, which is still in the regulatory approval process, could help the chipmaker run compute more economically by allowing more work to be done on fewer chips.

There's also a greater focus on lowering inference costs, essentially the price of asking an AI models a question and having them generate a response. While it's well known that training LLMs can come with astronomical prices, getting them to beam back an answer might come at an even steeper price. It's something that AI adopters are learning the hard way, prompting a "very near-term thing where you can see M&A because people can say there's real dollar value from inference savings," Axom's Bressers said. He noted potential buyers interested in this part of the tech stack could be the newer generation of cloud companies, like CoreWeave or Lambda.

Some cross-sector action

While most of the AI and AI-related deals will likely be between tech companies, Goldman's Min anticipates some transactions in the industrial space.

"Companies that already automate or help automate the supply chain, a lot of those interaction are already software to software or machine to machine, so those are ripe for AI to really deploy there," he said.

Other fertile grounds for acquisition going into 2025 include customer service and customer-relationship management companies, potentially spurred by some of Salesforce's recent AI ambitions, Axom's Hightower said. This year, the CRM giant Salesforce made "a hard pivot" to AI agents with a product that lets clients build their own custom ones to interact directly with clientele. Competitors like ServiceNow, Braze, Klayvio, and HubSpot to broaden their suite of solutions and add data and data connectivity to their offerings, he said.

Read the original article on Business Insider

Companies that want to go public without a diverse board may still have to get through Goldman Sachs

12 December 2024 at 12:36
Goldman Sachs

Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

  • A federal court struck down a rule requiring Nasdaq-listed companies to disclose board diversity.
  • Legal experts say the ruling won't likely impact Goldman Sachs' board diversity mandate.
  • Since 2020, the investment bank has only helped take public clients with diverse boards.

Wall Street's board diversity initiatives are not dead — yet.

On Wednesday, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down Nasdaq's efforts to push companies that want to list their stock on its exchange to diversify their boards or explain themselves. Nasdaq has said it will not appeal the decision. The Securities and Exchange Commission, which approved the Nasdaq rule in 2021, has said it is reviewing the decision.

Companies could continue to feel pressure to diversify their boards, however, from other stakeholders including shareholders and even Wall Street banks.

In 2020, David Solomon, CEO of Goldman Sachs, a top underwriter of initial public offerings, announced that the bank would start requiring the clients it helps take public to have at least one diverse board member. In 2021, the bank upped the requirement to two diverse board members, including at least one woman. It has also tasked one of its rising stars with a new role helping corporate clients find diverse board members.

Goldman declined to comment on its board diversity initiative, but legal experts say that the Fifth Circuit ruling should not impact the investment bank. That's because Wednesday's ruling, agreed to by 9 of the circuit's 17 judges, centered on the Securities and Exchange Commission's right to approve the Nasdaq's diversity rules.

The judges said the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 gives the SEC the authority to prevent fraud and promote competition — not enforce diversity disclosures.

Ann Lipton, a professor at Tulane University's law school, however, said that the ruling could still have a chilling effect on banks whose policies are often informed by federal standards.

"If those standards appear to be shifting, investment banks may alter their policies to conform," she said in an emailed statement.

Wall Street has historically been made up of mostly white men and remains so to this day. Following the death of George Floyd at the hands of police in 2020, more bank CEOs have begun personally setting goals to increase diversity at their companies, including at Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs.

Some Wall Street's diversity initiatives, however, have been walked back in recent months in light of an influential court ruling that significantly changed the way college campuses can use affirmative action in their admissions process. Bloomberg reported in March on investment-bank recruitment programs originally geared toward minorities that have been quietly opened to everyone.

In January, Goldman told Fortune that it had taken public 300 businesses that adhere to its diversity standards. Last year, the Goldman executive tasked with helping clients identify diverse board members told BI that she had helped facilitate 99 placements since her role was created on the heels of the bank's new diversity mandate.

"Demand was there and supply was there, there was just a market mechanism problem," Ilana Wolfe told BI at the time. "I'm most proud of being able to be that link."

Read the original article on Business Insider

3 reasons buying a home could get easier in 2025 — unless you're a first-time buyer

7 December 2024 at 01:15
housing market neighborhood

Richard Newstead/Getty Images

  • The red-hot US housing market could cool off slightly in 2025, making it easier to buy a home.
  • Expect stable or declining mortgage rates and more housing inventory, according to Redfin.
  • However, it's still prohibitively difficult for younger homebuyers to break into the market.

The American dream of home ownership has become increasingly harder to achieve in the last few years. Home prices are elevated, mortgage rates are high, and housing supply is constrained. That's not to mention the growing threat of climate change, which is driving up housing costs such as insurance, HOA fees, and property taxes in high-risk states.

There's both some good and bad news on the horizon for homebuyers, according to housing market experts.

The good news? On the whole, it'll be easier to buy a house in 2025. But the bad news, for younger homebuyers at least, is that's mostly just the case for boomers. Homeownership is actually looking as distant as ever for first-time buyers, especially Gen Z and millennials.

3 reasons it'll be easier to buy a house in 2025

First, housing prices are projected to increase slower than in previous years. Redfin economists Daryl Fairweather and Chen Zhao predict that median US home-sale prices will rise by 4% in 2025. Goldman Sachs has a similar outlook for 2025, predicting that US home prices will increase by 4.4%. That's roughly in line with median wage growth. Considering that US home prices shot up over 40% between March 2020 and January 2024, this sanguine prediction is good news for prospective homebuyers.

Another impediment to homeownership has been high mortgage rates, which have more than doubled in the last few years. The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate has risen from below 3% in 2021 to around 7%.

While a 7% rate is still high historically, it's a sign of improvement from this housing cycle's high of 7.8% in October 2023. And rates could come down further in 2025, according to housing market experts. Redfin expects mortgage rates to stay the same or decrease next year. Realtor.com forecasts mortgage rates to end 2025 at 6.2%.

Lastly, experts predict that new housing inventory will hit the market, bringing relief on the supply side. A Republican sweep in Congress is a positive sign for homebuilders, as the construction industry will benefit from fewer regulations, according to Redfin.

In October before the election, Jeffery Roach, chief economist of LPL Financial, said that an increase in housing starts, or construction of new residential housing units, was a signal for more single-family homes hitting the market over the course of the next few quarters. According to Realtor.com, housing starts for new single-family homes could hit 1.1 million in 2025, a 13.8% increase.

All of these factors could improve the housing market going into 2025. Redfin predicts that home sales will increase anywhere between 2% and 9% next year.

No houses for young homebuyers

But unfortunately, if you're a first-time homebuyer, you're probably out of luck. Redfin doesn't expect the increase in home sales to be driven by young or working-class buyers. It's looking likely that any new housing inventory that hits the market will go toward older Americans first.

"Instead, affordable homes will be snapped up by older buyers who are priced out of higher price tiers," Fairweather and Zhao wrote in a recent report.

Indeed, first-time homebuyers are having unprecedented difficulty in the housing market. It's typically more difficult for first-time buyers to purchase a home because they don't have funds from selling a previous home to use for a down payment and mortgage payments, Redfin said in a June report, but today's housing environment is especially hostile towards young buyers.

Wages simply haven't kept up with the pace of home price increases over the past five years. According to Elijah de la Campa, a Redfin senior economist, the cost of starter homes have increased twice as fast as incomes during that time. Additionally, for Gen Z and millennials, student loans and credit card debt are emerging as roadblocks to homeownership, as it's difficult to qualify for mortgages with a poor credit score and high levels of debt.

As a result, the median age of first-time homebuyers is now 38, according to the National Association of Realtors — an all-time high. That's up from 35 in 2023. First-time homebuyers are also an increasingly smaller proportion of the market, at just 24% in the 12-month period ending in June 2024. The year prior, that proportion was 32%.

Comparatively, boomers have an advantage in the housing market. According to Edward Yardeni, president of financial research firm Yardeni Research, boomers own roughly half of the nation's net worth and homeowner equity, giving them a leg up in the housing market. Now, as boomers age and look to downsize their homes or move elsewhere for retirement, they can take advantage of the home equity they've amassed from years of home ownership.

"Gen Zers, meanwhile, will keep living with family or renting until well into their 30s," wrote Fairweather and Zhao.

Read the original article on Business Insider

'You're a grown man; you can sort this out': Goldman Sachs banker wins unfair-dismissal case over sex discrimination

6 December 2024 at 05:25
Goldman Sachs logo against backdrop of stocks on screens.
Jonathan Reeves, a former Goldman Sachs banker, won an unfair-dismissal case at a UK employment tribunal.

Ramin Talaie/Corbis via Getty Images

  • An ex-Goldman Sachs banker has won a sex-discrimination case after being dismissed by the bank.
  • He said he was unfairly treated when he said he was struggling to balance work and parenthood.
  • A tribunal heard that one of Reeves' bosses repeatedly told him to "figure it out."

A former Goldman Sachs banker has won a sex-discrimination case after he was dismissed by the investment bank soon after returning from parental leave.

Jonathan Reeves, who was a vice president in the bank's compliance division in London, said he was unfairly dismissed shortly after returning to work in 2022.

The bank had said he was dismissed for performance reasons.

An employment tribunal ruled in Reeves' favor, saying Goldman Sachs subjected him "to sex discrimination when it alleged that he had performed worse than his peers, reduced his remuneration and dismissed" him.

Reeves told the tribunal that during a call in early 2020, he told his bosses he was finding it difficult to balance his childcare responsibilities for his first child with his job while working from home during COVID-19 lockdowns.

He told the tribunal he was repeatedly shouted at to "figure it out" by his superior Omar Beer.

The tribunal heard that another of his bosses, Tin Hsien Tan, said she had not heard this particular phrase being used but said: "I am sure it would have been more like, 'You're a grown man; you can sort this out.'"

"Mr. Beer appeared to be unwilling to acknowledge to the particular hardships or difficulties that some people, including those with very young children, might have experienced during COVID lockdowns," the judgment said.

Reeves also told the tribunal that Goldman Sachs bosses were "more empathic towards female employees in relation to childcare" than with men.

In late 2021, Reeves told his bosses that he and his wife were having a second child and that he planned to take six months of parental leave between November 2021 and May 2022. Before his leave began, Reeves said Beer told him that he was "jealous" and that he should "take advantage" of the leave.

He was dismissed soon after returning from this leave.

"There was no attempt by the Respondent to carry out any fair process before dismissing the Claimant," the tribunal said.

A spokesperson from Goldman Sachs told Business Insider: "The firm is deeply committed to supporting working parents, with hundreds of Goldman Sachs fathers having taken up our market leading 26 weeks paid parental leave since it was introduced in 2019. We are carefully reviewing the judgment and the reasoning supporting its findings."

Read the original article on Business Insider

The full list of major US companies slashing staff this year, including Meta, ExxonMobil, and Boeing

A Cargill meat processing plant in Arkansas.
Cargill is cutting 5% of its workforce.

Spencer Tirey/Getty Images

  • Last year's job cuts weren't the end of layoffs. Further reductions continue in 2024.
  • Companies like Flagstar Bank, Meta, PwC, Tesla, Google, Microsoft, and Nike have all announced cuts.
  • See the list of companies reducing their worker numbers in 2024.

After a brutal year of layoffs in 2023, companies this year have continued to cut jobs across tech, media, finance, manufacturing, and retail.

Tech titans like Meta, IBM, Google, and Microsoft; finance leaders like Goldman Sachs, Citi, and BlackRock; accounting firms like PwC; entertainment behemoths like Pixar and Paramount; and corporate giants like Tesla, Dow, and Nike have all announced layoffs.

A survey in late December said nearly 40% of business leaders had expected layoffs this year, ResumeBuilder said. ResumeBuilder talked to about 900 leaders at organizations with more than 10 employees.

One major factor survey respondents cited was artificial intelligence. Around four in 10 leaders said they would conduct layoffs as they replace workers with AI. Last year, Dropbox, Google, and IBM announced job cuts related to AI.

Here are the dozens of companies with job cuts planned or already underway in 2024.

The US' biggest privately-owned company, Cargill, is cutting thousands of jobs
A Cargill meat processing plant in Arkansas.
Cargill is cutting 5% of its workforce.

Spencer Tirey/Getty Images

Cargill, the largest privately owned company in the US, is slashing 5% of its workforce.

The company, which is the world's largest agricultural commodities trader, will lay off thousands of workers from its 164,000-strong workforce, Bloomberg reported on Monday, citing an internal memo it had seen.

"To strengthen Cargill's impact, we must realign our talent and resources to align with our strategy," a Cargill spokesperson told BI.

The cuts would impact workers across all professional levels from countries in Asia, Latin America, North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

The layoffs will not touch its executive team but will impact its "next level senior leaders," Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

"The majority of these reductions will take place this year," Chief Executive Officer Brian Sikes said in the memo, seen by Bloomberg. "They'll focus on streamlining our organizational structure by removing layers, expanding the scope and responsibilities of our managers, and reducing duplication of work."

Microchip Tech is closing an Arizona factory
Semiconductor microchip stock image
Microchip Technology is closing a factory in Arizona, which is expected to cut around 500 jobs.

iStock/Getty Images Plus

Microchip Technology, a chipmaker for a variety of consumer products, on Monday said it was closing a facility in Tempe, Arizona, as it deals with slower-than-anticipated orders.

The closure is expected to affect about 500 jobs from the company's total of 22,300, Microchip said. The closure will progress in stages and end in September 2025.

"While the company has taken steps to right size inventory and reduce expenses— including temporary pay reductions and company-wide and factory shutdowns—these measures have not been enough," a spokesperson for Microchip said in a statement on Tuesday.

Microchip also updated its revenue guidance for the quarter ending in December quarter to $1.025 billion, which is at the lower end of its earlier forecast.

The company's stock fell about 3% in after-hours trading and is down 22% year-to-date.

Publishing giant Hearst Magazines trims staff.
Hearst Tower
Hearst Tower

Rob Kim/Getty Images

The owner of publications including Esquire and Cosmopolitan is conducting a round of layoffs, The Hollywood Reporter said in a November 21 report.

The exact number of positions impacted is not clear.

"After a thorough review of our business, we've decided to reallocate resources to better support our goals and continue our focus on digital innovation while strengthening our best in class print products," Hearst Magazines president Debi Chirichella told staff in a memo obtained by THR. "We will scale back in areas that do not support our core strategy and will eliminate certain positions as we reimagine our team structures to drive long-term growth."

Boeing starts issuing layoff notices to 400 workers amid plans for 10% global cut
A Boeing facility.
Boeing is cutting 10% of its global workforce.

PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images

In October, Boeing said that it would cut 10% of its 170,000-strong global workforce. The reduction plan will include 2,199 employees in Washington and another 50 in Oregon, according to the company's filings.

As part of the cuts, Boeing is laying off more than 400 workers who are part of its professional aerospace labor union. The Seattle Times reported that 438 members of the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA) received pink slips.

These included engineers, scientists, analysts, technicians, and other jobs, the outlet reported.

In a note to employees on October 11, CEO Kelly Ortberg said Boeing was in a "difficult position" and that "restoring our company requires tough decisions."

The layoffs come at a difficult time for Boeing. Its share price has fallen more than 40% since the start of the year as it grapples with the fallout from a seven-week strike and technical faults like a door plug coming off an Alaska Airlines 737 Max midflight in January.

Representatives of Boeing and the SPEEA didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Exxon is cutting nearly 400 jobs after Pioneer merger
A sign that reads "Exxon" in red letters.
Exxon Mobil is cutting about 400 employees after Pioneer merger.

Andrew Kelly/Reuters

ExxonMobil is cutting about 400 employees from Pioneer Natural Resources, the oil and gas company it acquired earlier this year.

The cuts will come in seven stages and will be completed in May 2026, Exxon said in a notice to the Texas Workforce Commission.

The cuts represent almost 20% of Pioneer's pre-merger workforce and will mostly affect employees in Pioneer's suburban Dallas offices, the notice said.

AMD is laying off roughly 4% of its workforce.
AMD logo
AMD is reportedly cutting roughly 4% of its global workforce, or around 1,000 employees.

Costfoto/NurPhoto via Getty Images

AMD confirmed it would be reducing its global staff, which numbered around 26,000 total employees as of December 2023.

As a part of aligning our resources with our largest growth opportunities, we are taking a number of targeted steps that will unfortunately result in reducing our global workforce by approximately 4%," an AMD representative said in a statement to Business Insider. "We are committed to treating impacted employees with respect and helping them through this transition."

The cuts are reportedly targeting sales and marketing roles in areas like consumer PC and gaming PC, according to Bloomberg.

The computer chipmaker is focusing efforts on the artificial intelligence industry as it chases rival Nvidia in the GPU market. In October, AMD raised its 2024 GPU sales estimates from its initial $4.5 billion to over $5 billion.

Chegg is cutting 21% of its employees as AI search destroys its business
Chegg logo on orange background
Chegg is letting go of 21% of its staff amid competition from ChatGPT and other AI searchers.

Pavlo Gonchar via Getty Images

Online education site Chegg is laying off staff for the second time this year as generative AI platforms obliterate its business model.

Chegg said it is cutting 319 employees, or 21% of its staff, as it faces strong competition from platforms like ChatGPT. The company slashed global headcount by 23% in June.

"The speed and scale of Google's AIO rollout and student adoption of generative AI products have negatively impacted our industry and our business," Nathan Schultz, Chegg's CEO, said in an earnings release. The company reported a loss of $212.6 million for the third quarter.

Chegg's stock has fallen nearly 85% since the start of this year.

23andMe is cutting 40% of its staff
23andMe sign on a building
23andMe is cutting 40% of its staff and exiting its therapeautics business.

Smith Collection/Gado

Genetic testing company 23andMe is cutting 200 employees, or 40% of its workforce, to reduce costs and refocus its business.

The Bay Area-based company is also discontinuing further development of all its therapeutics programs, it said in a mid-November statement.

Anne Wojcicki, 23andMe's CEO and cofounder, has been trying to take the struggling company private since April.

23andMe debuted on the stock market in 2021 but fallen from its peak valuation of $6 billion — its market cap is now north of $100 million. Financial and strategic missteps, as well as high-profile user data hacks, have dragged the company down.

Beyond Inc. plans to cut 20% of its workforce
Bed, Bath & Beyond logo
Beyond Inc., the parent company of Bed Bath & Beyond, Overstock, and Zulily, is the latest to announce layoffs.

PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images

The parent company of Bed Bath & Beyond, Overstock, Zulily, and other brands revealed its decision to slash a fifth of its staff in an October SEC filing.

The workplace reduction was taken to create a more "variable, leverageable cost structure" and to help align the company with its "asset-light business that supports an affinity and data monetization model with a strong technology focus," Beyond Inc. said in the filing.

The cuts are estimated to save roughly $20 million annually in fixed costs and are expected to be "substantially implemented" in the fourth quarter of 2024.

The news came shortly after Beyond Inc. and Kirkland announced a partnership that means physical Bed Bath & Beyond stores will return in smaller-format "neighborhood" locations.

Meta added to the 20,000+ people it's laid off since 2022
Meta logo on banner
The newest cuts affect employees at units including Instagram, WhatsApp, and Reality Labs.

Chesnot/Getty

Meta is eliminating some roles on units including Instagram, WhatsApp, and its VR and AR division Reality Labs.

"A few teams at Meta are making changes to ensure resources are aligned with their long-term strategic goals and location strategy," a Meta spokesperson told BI on October 17. "This includes moving some teams to different locations, and moving some employees to different roles."

It's unclear how many roles will be affected, but Meta has trimmed its staff significantly in the year and a half, with more than 20,000 job cuts since 2022. CEO Mark Zuckerberg proclaimed 2023 a "year of efficiency" at the company, and continued cost-cutting measures this year as the tech giant gets flatter in structure.

TikTok is laying off employees as part of content moderation changes.
TikTok logo
Tiktok is cutting employees in its content-moderation arm.

Illustration by Omar Marques/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

TikTok is cutting employees in various locations as part of changes to its content-moderation strategy.

A spokesperson for the China-owned company told Reuters in October that 80% of content that violates its policy is now removed through automated technology.

The company did not provide details on the exact number of positions that it eliminated but told Reuters the cuts would affect "several hundred" employees.

PwC is cutting 1,800 employees.
PwC
PwC is laying off about 2.5% of its staff.

Michael Kappeler/picture alliance via Getty Images

Big Four accounting firm PwC is cutting 1,800 workers, which is about 2.5% of its staff. The cuts will impact staffers ranging from associates to managing directors — half of them offshore. Those affected by the cuts will be informed in October.

In an emailed statement to Business Insider, Tim Grady, PwC's US chief operating officer, said, "To remain competitive and position our business for the future, we are continuing to transform
areas of our firm and are aligning our workforce to better support our strategy, including attracting and moving the right talent and skill sets to the areas where we need them most. Right now, we are focused on running our business well and adapting to meet the needs of our clients and the rapidly changing market."

Nike's up-to-$2 billion cost-cutting plan will involve severances
Nike Customers walk past a Nike store in Shanghai, China
Athletic retailer Nike will be making reductions to staffing as part of a cost-cutting initiative.

CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images

Nike announced its cost-cutting plans in a December 2023 earnings call, discussing a slow growth in sales. The call subsequently resulted in Nike's stock plunging.

"We are seeing indications of more cautious consumer behavior around the world," Nike Chief Financial Officer Matt Friend said in December.

Google laid off hundreds more workers in 2024
Google CEO Sundar Pichai
Google confirmed the layoffs to Business Insider in an email.

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

On January 10, Google laid off hundreds of workers in its central engineering division and members of its hardware teams — including those working on its voice-activated assistant.

In an email to some affected employees, the company encouraged them to consider applying for open positions at Google if they want to remain employed. April 9 was the last day for those unable to secure a new position, the email said.

The tech giant laid off thousands throughout 2023, beginning with a 6% reduction of its global workforce — about 12,000 people — last January.

Discord laid off 170 employees.
Discord logo displayed on a phone screen and Discord website displayed on a screen in the background are seen in this illustration photo taken in Krakow, Poland on November 5, 2022.
Jason Citron said rapid growth was to blame for the cuts.

Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto/Getty Images

Discord employees learned about the layoffs in an all-hands meeting and a memo sent by CEO Jason Citron in early January.

"We grew quickly and expanded our workforce even faster, increasing by 5x since 2020," Citron said in the memo. "As a result, we took on more projects and became less efficient in how we operated."

In August 2023, Discord reduced its headcount by 4%. According to CNBC, the company was valued at $15 billion in 2021.

Citi will cut 20,000 from its staff as part of its corporate overhaul.
Jane Fraser speaking at the Milken Insitute
CEO Jane Fraser has been vocal about the necessity for restructuring at Citigroup.

Patrick T. Fallon/Getty Images

The layoffs announced in January are part of a larger Citigroup initiative to restructure the business and could leave the company with a remaining head count of 180,000 — excluding its Mexico operations.

In an earnings call that month, the bank said that layoffs could save the company up to $2.5 billion after it suffered a "very disappointing" final quarter last year.

Amazon-owned Twitch also announced job cuts.
Twitch is walking back its policy allowing for "artistic nudity" after just two days.
Twitch is cutting more than 500 positions.

NurPhoto/Getty Images

Twitch announced on January 10 that it would cut 500 jobs, affecting over a third of the employees at the live-streaming company.

CEO Dan Clancy announced the layoffs in a memo, telling staff that while the company has tried to cut costs, the operation is "meaningfully" bigger than necessary.

"As you all know, we have worked hard over the last year to run our business as sustainably as possible," Clancy wrote. "Unfortunately, we still have work to do to rightsize our company and I regret having to share that we are taking the painful step to reduce our headcount by just over 500 people across Twitch."

BlackRock is planning to cut 3% of its staff.
BlackRock logo
BlackRock expects to lay off 3% of its workforce.

Leonardo Munoz/VIEWpress

Larry Fink, BlackRock's chief executive, and Rob Kapito, the firm's president, announced in January that the layoffs would affect around 600 people from its workforce of about 20,000.

However, the company has plans to expand in other areas to support growth in its overseas markets.

"As we prepare for 2024 and this very exciting but distinctly different landscape, businesses across the firm have developed plans to reallocate resources," the company leaders said in a memo.

Rent the Runway is slashing 10% of its corporate jobs as part of a restructuring.
Woman walks out the door of Rent the Runway store
Rent the Runway is laying off a few dozen people in its corporate workforce.

Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

In the fashion company's January announcement, COO and president Anushka Salinas said she will also be leaving the firm, Fast Company reported.

Unity Software is eliminating 25% of its workforce.
Sutro combines the best of Unity, Figma, Retool, and GPT-3
Unity Software plans to cut roughly 1,800 jobs.

Sutro Software

Around 1,800 jobs at the video game software company will be affected by the layoffs announced, Reuters reported in January.

eBay cut 1,000 jobs
eBay logo sign outside its office
eBay wants to become "more nimble."

ullstein bild Dtl/ Getty

In a January 23 memo, CEO Jamie Iannone told employees that the eBay layoffs will affect about 9% of the company's workforce.

Iannone told employees that layoffs were necessary as the company's "overall headcount and expenses have outpaced the growth of our business."

The company also plans to scale back on contractors.

Microsoft is reportedly cutting 650 more jobs from its Xbox division
Xbox logo on phone with Microsoft logo in the background
Microsoft is reportedly laying off hundreds of employees in Xbox division

SOPA Images/Getty Images

Microsoft will be laying off hundreds of employees in its Xbox gaming division, Bloomberg first reported in September.

The job cuts will mainly affect workers in corporate and support functions, the outlet reported, citing a memo sent by Microsoft Gaming chief Phil Spencer.

However, he reportedly added that the company is not planning to close any studios or remove any games or devices.

This comes after the company also slashed 1,900 workers at Activision, Xbox, and ZeniMax in late January.

Nearly three months after Microsoft acquired video game firm Activision Blizzard, the company announced layoffs in its gaming divisions. The layoffs mostly affect employees at Activision Blizzard.

Xbox in May also reportedly offered some employees voluntary severance packages after shutting three units and absorbing a fourth earlier in the month.

Salesforce is cutting 700 employees across the company, The Wall Street Journal reported
Salesforce Tower in New York.
Salesforce laid off about a tenth of its headcount last year.

Plexi Images/Glasshouse Images/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Salesforce announced a round of layoffs that the company says will affect 1% of its global workforce, The Journal reported in late January.

The cuts followed a wave of cuts at the cloud giant last year. In 2023, Marc Benioff's company laid off about 10% of its total workforce — or roughly 7,000 jobs. The CEO said the company over-hired during the pandemic.

iRobot is laying off around 350 employees and founder Colin Angle will step down as chairman and CEO
iRobot co-founder Colin Angle
iRobot's executive vice president and chief legal officer Glen Weinstein has been appointed interim CEO upon Angle's exit from the company.

Kimberly White/Getty Images

The company behind the Roomba Vacuum announced layoffs in late January around the same time Amazon decided not to go through with its proposed acquisition of the company, the Associated Press reported.

UPS will cut 12,000 jobs in 2024.
UPS Driver in truck
UPS CEO Carol Tomé told investors that the company will reduce its headcount by 12,000 by the end of 2024.

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

The UPS layoffs will affect 14% of the company's 85,000 managers and could save the company $1 billion in 2024, UPS CEO Carol Tomé said during a January earnings call.

Paypal CEO Alex Chriss announced the company would lay off 9% of its workforce.
PayPal
PayPal announced layoffs at the end of January.

(Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Announced in late January, this round of layoffs will affect about 2,500 employees at the payment processing company.

"We are doing this to right-size our business, allowing us to move with the speed needed to deliver for our customers and drive profitable growth," CEO Alex Chriss wrote in a January memo. "At the same time, we will continue to invest in areas of the business we believe will create and accelerate growth."

Okta is cutting roughly 7% of its workforce.
Okta logo displayed on a phone with bright lights in the background
Okta announced a restructuring plan at the start of February.

SOPA Images/ Getty

The digital-access-management company announced its plans for a "restructuring plan intended to improve operating efficiencies and strengthen the Company's commitment to profitable growth" in an SEC filing in February.

The cuts will impact roughly 400 employees.

Okta CEO Todd McKinnon told staff in a memo that "costs are still too high," CNBC reported.

Snap has announced more layoffs.
Snapchat logo and dollar signs in front of a purple background
Snap has announced another round of job cuts.

Snapchat, Tyler Le/Insider

The company behind Snapchat announced in February that it's reducing its global workforce by 10%, according to an SEC filing.

Estée Lauder said it will eliminate up to 3,100 positions.
Estee Lauder display
Between 1,600 and 3,100 jobs will be eliminated from the company.

Reuters

The cosmetics company announced in February that it would be cutting 3% to 5% of its roles as part of a restructuring plan.

Estee Lauder reportedly employed about 62,000 employees around the world as of June 30, 2023.

DocuSign is eliminating roughly 6% of its workforce as part of a restructuring plan.
docusign
The electronic signature company is cutting 6% of its workforce.

Igor Golovniov/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images

The electronic signature company said in an SEC filing in February that most of the cuts will be in its sales and marketing divisions.

Zoom is slashing 150 jobs
Zoom CEO Eric Yuan
Videoconferencing company Zoom laid off 1,300 people in February 2023. The following February it announced 150 layoffs.

Kena Betancur

Zoom announced 150 job losses in February, which amounted to about 2% of its workforce. It had announced it was laying off 1,300 people the previous February.

Paramount Global is laying off 800 employees days after record-breaking Super Bowl
Paramount Global CEO Bob Bakish
CEO Bob Bakish sent a note informing employees of layoffs.

Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/AP

In February, Paramount Global CEO Bob Bakish sent a memo to employees announcing that 800 jobs — about 3% of its workforce — were being cut.

Deadline obtained the memo less than a month after reporting plans for layoffs at Paramount. The announcement comes on the heels of Super Bowl LVIII reaching record-high viewership across CBS, Paramount+, and Nickelodeon, and Univision.

Morgan Stanley is trimming its wealth management division by hundreds of staffers
morgan stanley phone logo chart
The layoffs mark one of the first major moves by newly-installed CEO Ted Pick.

Pavlo Gonchar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Morgan Stanley is laying off several hundred employees in its wealth-management division, the Wall Street Journal reported in February, representing roughly 1% of the team.

The wealth-management division has seen some slowdown at the start of 2024, with net new assets down by about 8% from a year ago. The layoffs mark the first major move by newly-installed CEO Ted Pick, who took the reins from James Gorman on January 1.

Expedia Group is cutting more than 8% of its workforce
expedia group ceo peter kern stands in front of a large screen that says unprecedented reach with a man throwing a child in the air
Peter Kern, CEO of Expedia Group

Business Wire

An Expedia spokesperson told BI that it was implementing cutbacks, as part of an operational review, that were expected to impact 1,500 roles this year.

The company's product and technology division is set to be the worst hit, a report from GeekWire said, citing an internal memo CEO Peter Kern sent to employees in late February.

"While this review will result in the elimination of some roles, it also allows the company to invest in core strategic areas for growth," the spokesperson said.

"Consultation with local employee representatives, where applicable, will occur before making any final decisions," they added.

Sony is laying off 900 workers
A corner of a PlayStation 5
The tech company is slashing 900 workers from its workforce.

NurPhoto/Getty Images

The cuts at Sony Interactive Entertainment swept through its game-making teams at PlayStation Studios.

Insomniac Games, which developed the hit Spider-Man video game series, as well as Naughty Dog, the developers behind Sony's flagship 'The Last of Us' video games' were hit by the cuts, the company announced on February 27.

All of PlayStation's London studio will be shuttered, according to the proposal.

"Delivering and sustaining social, online experiences – allowing PlayStation gamers to explore our worlds in different ways – as well as launching games on additional devices such as PC and Mobile, requires a different approach and different resources," PlayStation Studios boss Hermen Hulst wrote.

Hulst added that some games in development will be shut down, though he didn't say which ones.

In early February, Sony said it missed its target for selling PlayStation 5 consoles. The earnings report sent shares tumbling and the company's stock lost about $10 billion in value.

Bumble slashed 30% of its workforce
new bumble CEO Lidiane Jones
Lidiane Jones, CEO of Bumble.

Eugene Gologursky/Stringer/Gr

On February 27, the dating app company announced that it would be reducing its staff due to "future strategic priorities" for its business, per a statement.

The cuts will impact about 30% of its about 1,200 person workforce or about 350 roles, a representative for Bumble told BI by email.

"We are taking significant and decisive actions that ensure our customers remain at the center of everything we do as we relaunch Bumble App, transform our organization and accelerate our product roadmap," Bumble Inc CEO Lidiane Jones said in a statement.

Electronic Arts reduced its workforce by 5%
Electronic Arts  logo displayed on a phone screen
Electronic Arts is cutting hundreds of jobs.

Getty Images

Electronic Arts is laying off about 670 workers, equating to 5% of its workforce, Bloomberg reported in late February.

The gaming firm axed two mobile games earlier in February, which it described as a difficult decision in a statement issued to GamesIndustry.biz.

CEO Andrew Wilson reportedly told employees in a memo that it would be "moving away from development of future licensed IP that we do not believe will be successful in our changing industry."

Wilson also said in the memo that the cuts came as a result of shifting customer needs and a refocusing of the company, Bloomberg reported.

IBM cut staff in marketing and communications
Arvind Krishna, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of IBM addresses the gathering on the first day of the three-day B20 Summit in New Delhi on August 25, 2023
IBM CEO Arvind Krishna said last year that he could easily see 30% of the company's staff getting replaced by AI and automation over the coming five years.

Sajjad Hussain/Getty Images

IBM's chief communications officer Jonathan Adashek told employees on March 12 that it would be cutting staff, CNBC reported, citing a source familiar with the matter.

An IBM spokesperson told Business Insider in a statement that the cuts follow a broader workforce action the company announced during its earnings call in January.

"In 4Q earnings earlier this year, IBM disclosed a workforce rebalancing charge that would represent a very low single-digit percentage of IBM's global workforce, and we expect to exit 2024 at roughly the same level of employment as we entered with," they said.

IBM has also been clear about the impact of AI on its workforce. In May 2023, IBM's CEO Arvind Krishna said the company expected to pause hiring on roles that could be replaced by AI, especially in areas like human resources and other non-consumer-facing departments.

"I could easily see 30% of that getting replaced by AI and automation over a five-year period," Krishna told Bloomberg at the time.

Amazon is laying off hundreds in its cloud division in yet another round of cuts this year
amazon logo in a building lobby
The cuts follow several rounds of layoffs at Amazon last year.

Mark Lennihan/Associated Press

Amazon is cutting hundreds of jobs from its cloud division known as Amazon Web Services, Bloomberg reported on April 3.

The reduction will impact employees on the sales and marketing team and those working on tech for its retail stores, Bloomberg reported.

"We've identified a few targeted areas of the organization we need to streamline in order to continue focusing our efforts on the key strategic areas that we believe will deliver maximum impact," an Amazon spokesperson told Bloomberg.

On March 26, Amazon announced another round of job cuts after the company said it was slashing 'several hundred' jobs at its Prime Video and MGM Studios divisions earlier this year to refocus on more profitable products.

"We've identified opportunities to reduce or discontinue investments in certain areas while increasing our investment and focus on content and product initiatives that deliver the most impact," Mike Hopkins, SVP of Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios, told employees in January.

This year's cuts follow the largest staff layoff in the company's history. In 2023, the tech giant laid off 18,000 workers.

Apple has cut over 700 employees across its self-driving car, displays, and services groups
Tim Cook
The cuts follow Apple's decision to withdraw from two major projects.

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Apple slashed its California workforce by more than 600 employees in April.

The cuts came after Apple decided to withdraw from its car and smartwatch display projects.

The tech giant filed a series of notices to comply with the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification program. One of the addresses was linked to a new display development office, while the others were for the company's EV effort, Bloomberg reported.

Apple officially shut down its decadelong EV project in February. At the time, Bloomberg reported that some employees would move to generative AI, but others would be laid off.

Bloomberg noted that the layoffs were likely an undercount of the full scope of staff cuts, as Apple had staff working on these projects in other locations.

In late August, Bloomberg reported that Apple was slashing 100 jobs in its services group, citing people familiar with the matter.

The layoffs mainly involved people working on the Apple Books app and the Apple Bookstore, Bloomberg reported. Cuts were also made to other service teams like Apple News, the outlet added.

Representatives for Apple did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider sent outside normal business hours.

Tesla laid off over 10% of its workforce
A red Tesla outside a Tesla showroom.
Impacted employees were notified that they were being terminated, effective immediately.

JOHN THYS / Getty

Tesla CEO Elon Musk sent a memo to employees on April 14, at nearly midnight in California, informing them of the company's plan to cut over 10% of its global workforce.

In his companywide memo, Musk cited "duplication of roles and job functions in certain areas" as the reason behind the reductions.

An email sent to terminated employees, obtained by BI, read: "Effective now, you will not need to perform any further work and therefore will no longer have access to Tesla systems and physical locations."

On April 29, Musk reportedly sent an email stating the need for more layoffs at Tesla. He also announced the departure of two executives and said that their reports would also be let go. Six known Tesla executives have left the company since layoffs began in April.

Grand Theft Auto 6 publisher Take-Two Interactive is reducing its workforce by 5%
Take-Two Interactive logo next to GTA6 banner
Take-Two Interactive is slated to cut around 600 roles this year.

Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto/Getty Images

Take-Two Interactive, the parent company of Rockstar Games, said on April 16 that it would be "eliminating several projects" and reducing its workforce by about 5%.

The move — a part of its larger "cost reduction program" — will cost the video game publisher up to $200 million. It's expected to be completed by December 31.

As of March 2023, the company said it employed approximately 11,580 full-time workers.

Peloton announced it was reducing its staff by 15% as the CEO stepped down
Barry McCarthy
Barry McCarthy served as the CEO of Peloton for just over two years.

Getty/Ilya S. Savenok

Peloton CEO Barry McCarthy is stepping down, the company announced May 2. Along with his departure, the fitness company is also laying off about 400 workers.

McCarthy is leaving his role just two years after replacing John Foley as CEO and president in 2022. Peloton said the changes are expected to reduce annual expenses by over $200 million by the end of fiscal 2025 as part of a larger restructuring plan.

Indeed is cutting 1,000 workers after laying off 2,200 in 2023
Indeed
Indeed draws more than 250 million people from around the world each month, making it the largest job site.

SOPA Images / Getty Images

Careers site Indeed says it will lay off roughly 1,000 employees, or 8% of its workforce, as it looks to simplify its organization.

CEO Chris Hyams took responsibility for "how we got here" in a memo in May but said the company is not yet set up for growth after last year's global hiring slowdown caused multiple quarters of declining sales.

Hyams said the latest cuts will be more concentrated in the US and primarily affect R&D and Go-to-Market teams. It comes after last year's across-the-board reduction of 2,200 workers.

Walmart is axing hundreds of corporate jobs
Walmart storefront
A Walmart storefront in the US.

Kena Betancur/VIEWpress via Getty Images

Retail giant Walmart is cutting hundreds of corporate jobs and asking remote employees to come to work, The Wall Street Journal reported in May, citing people familiar with the matter.

Workers in smaller offices, such as those in Dallas, Atlanta, and Toronto, are also being asked to move to central locations like Walmart's corporate headquarters in Arkansas or those in New Jersey or California, the Journal reported.

Under Armour is slashing an unspecified number of jobs, incurring $22 million in severance costs
Under Armour
An Under Armour retail store.

Alex Tai/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Under Armour confirmed it was conducting layoffs in its quarterly earnings report, which was released May 16.

The company said it will pay out employee severance and benefits expenses of roughly $15 million in cash-related and $7 million in non-cash charges this year related to a restructuring plan, with close to half of that occurring in the current fiscal quarter.

"This is not where I envisaged Under Armour playing at this point in our journey," CEO Kevin Plank told investors on the company's full-year earnings call. "That said, we'll use this turbulence to reconstitute our brand and business, giving athletes, retail customers and shareholders bigger and better reasons to care about and believe in Under Armour's potential."

Pixar cuts about 175 people in pivot back to feature films
Inside Out 2. Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Anger (Lewis Black), Fear (Tony Hale) and Disgust (Liza Lapira) react to a new emotion in Riley's head called Anxiety (Maya Hawke).
"Inside Out," a 2015 film, is one of Pixar's many hits.

Disney/Pixar

Disney's Pixar Animation Studios is cutting 175 people, about 14% of its staff, Reuters reported.

The cuts started on May 21 as the studio returns to its focus on feature-length movies. Former Disney CEO Bob Chapek, who was axed in 2022, had increased staff across studios to create more content for the company's streaming service, Disney+.

Pixar cut 75 jobs last year, Reuters previously reported, part of a larger restructuring across Disney.

Lucid Motors is slashing around 400 jobs
A Lucid Air car on display.
Lucid Motors will cut about 6% of its workforce.

John Keeble/Getty Images

In a regulatory filing, Lucid Motors said it would lay off about 400 employees as part of a restructuring plan that should be complete by the end of the third quarter.

"I'm confident Lucid will deliver the world's best SUV and dramatically expand our total addressable market, but we aren't generating revenue from the program yet," CEO Peter Rawlinson said in an email to employees obtained by TechCrunch.

The cuts come ahead of Lucid's launch of its first electric SUV later this year. It comes over a year after the California-based company laid off 1,300 employees, TechCrunch previously reported.

John Deere is laying off over 600 employees
line of green john deere tractors in a dirt lot with snow capped mountains in the background
John Deere tractors for sale at a dealer in Longmont, Colorado.

Rick Wilking/Reuters

John Deere, maker of the iconic green-and-yellow tractors, is laying off over 600 employees at factories in Illinois and Iowa, the AP reported July 1.

In May, John Deere said sales fell for the third consecutive quarter and projected that the declines would continue in the second half of its fiscal year.

Burberry is expected to cut 100s of jobs
Burberry
Burberry is reportedly cutting hundreds of roles.

Anton Novoderezhkin\TASS via Getty Images

London-based luxury retailer Burberry is expected to cut hundreds of jobs in the coming weeks, the Telegraph reported July 6.

Employees learned about the cuts in late June when they were told in a Zoom meeting that their roles could be eliminated or that they would need to apply for other jobs, according to the Telegraph.

Intuit announced cuts on July 10
Intuit logo
Intuit announced it would fire 1,800 employees as the company shifts focus to AI development.

Chris Helgren/Reuters

Intuit announced on July 10 that it's cutting its workforce by 10%. The layoffs will affect 1,800 employees nationwide, but the company plans to hire 1,800 new employees in "key areas" like engineering, InvestorPlace reports.

The refocus on other areas is following a shift in focus on AI within the company, according to the outlet.

Intuit's stock dropped by 4.01% on July 10 after the company announced the layoffs.

Tinder parent Match group plans to cut 6% of jobs
Tinder app
Tinder and Hinge parent company is cutting about 156 jobs globally.

Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Match Group, the parent company of Tinder and Hinge, said on July 30 that it would reduce its global workforce by about 6%, or about 156 employees because it is exiting the livestreaming business.

Match said it would remove the livestreaming service from its app Plenty of Fish and sunset the Hakuna app, which focuses on Korea and Japan.

The reduction in workforce is expected to save the company $13 million in annual costs.

Disney cuts 140 jobs across its TV division
Disney+
Disney Entertainment Television (DET) is eliminating roughly 2% of its workforce.

SOPA Images/Getty Images

Deadline and Bloomberg reported in July that Disney was making cuts across its TV division, to the tune of roughly 140 jobs — or 2% of the staff at Disney Entertainment Television (DET).

Layoffs will impact National Geographic, owned television stations, the marketing and publicity departments, and Freeform, per a source close to the matter, which notes no teams have been eliminated.

While Disney's cable TV business generates billions, it's on the decline, Bloomberg reports, and the company is seeking to cut costs.

Last year, Disney slashed 7,000 jobs across multiple rounds of layoffs as part of a strategy implemented by returning CEO Bob Iger.

Intel plans to eliminate thousands of jobs
Life-size Intel logo.
Intel expected to eliminate thousands of jobs, Bloomberg reported.

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Intel plans to cut thousands of jobs in response to a second-quarter earnings slump, Bloomberg reported earlier this week, citing unnamed people familiar with the move.

It was officially announced on August 1, as it posted Q2 earnings. The company intends to reduce its workforce by 15% by the end of 2024.

"Our Q2 financial performance was disappointing, even as we hit key product and process technology milestones," Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said in a statement. "Second-half trends are more challenging than we previously expected, and we are leveraging our new operating model to take decisive actions that will improve operating and capital efficiencies while accelerating our IDM 2.0 transformation."

Intel's stock was down following the lackluster earnings.

The layoffs come after the chip maker laid off about 5% of its workforce last year, bringing its head count down to around 124,000, Bloomberg reported.

During the last round of layoffs, announced in October 2022, Intel faced a drop in demand for processors for personal computers and estimated the layoffs would save $10 billion in costs by 2025, per Bloomberg.

Intel did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

WW International is cutting jobs in corporate
WeightWatchers logo in a storefront.
WeightWatchers is cutting down its staff.

Eugene Gologursky

Diet program creator WW International, formerly WeightWatchers, plans to lay off employees, it said in an earnings call on August 1.

The company did not specify the number of jobs it will cut. But the layoffs will largely focus on corporate positions, including a 40% cut in roles above and at the vice president level.

The cuts are expected to save the company $60 million, the company's chief financial officer said.

Dell is cutting sales jobs in new focus on AI products
The exterior of a Dell Technologies office building is seen on January 04, 2023 in Round Rock, Texas.
A Dell Technologies office building in Round Rock, Texas.

Brandon Bell/Getty

Dell is cutting jobs on its sales team, Bloomberg reported. It wasn't immediately clear how many jobs Dell planned to eliminate.

In a memo announcing the cuts, company executives said that the choice was part of a restructuring to focus more on selling AI products and data center services, Bloomberg reported.

Dell did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BI, but a spokesman told Bloomberg: "Through a reorganization of our go-to-market teams and an ongoing series of actions, we are becoming a leaner company."

Paramount Global announced it plans to slash 15% of its US workforce
Paramount on building
Paramount Global plans to cut 15% of its US workforce.

PATRICK T. FALLON/Getty Images

Paramount Global is planning to cut about 2,000 jobs ahead of its merger with Skydance Media, CNBC reported.

The company identified $500 million in cost savings as it prepared to join forces with Skydance, totalling about 15% of its US workforce, according to the outlet.

The cuts will begin in a few weeks and will mostly be finished by the end of 2024. Paramount employees in marketing and communications, finance, legal, technology, and other support functions have been targeted, the company said on an earnings call.

The cuts come about a month after Paramount agreed to merge with Skydance. Paramount shares jumped more than 5% after hours.

Stellantis is slashing white-collar and factory jobs
The logo of Stellantis is seen on the company's building in Velizy-Villacoublay near Paris, France, March 19, 2024.
Stellantis is cutting 400 jobs.

Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters

In August, the owner of Jeep and Dodge announced it is cutting 2,450 factory workers from its Warren Truck assembly plant outside Detroit.

The layoffs come because the company is ending production of the Ram 1500 Classic truck, Stellantis said. These factory cuts came after white-collar jobs were axed earlier this year.

On March 22, the company said it would lay off employees on its engineering, technology, and software teams in an effort to cut costs, CNBC reported.

Stellantis announced plans for another round of layoffs on July 30, according to Bloomberg. The company is offering voluntary buyouts to non-unionized US employees to "assist those interested in pursuing other career options or retirement," Stellantis said in a message seen by Bloomberg.

The job cuts, the total number of which remains unknown, come after a difficult first half of the year, with unit sales sinking by 16% in the US.

Sonos laid off about 6% of its workforce
Sonos Roam, portable speakers
Sonos laid off about 100 workers in August.

Courtesy of Sonos

The audio equipment company said it slashed roughly 100 jobs in August. The layoffs significantly targeted its marketing division, The Verge reported.

CEO Patrick Spence said in a statement to BI that the company is now focusing on departing employees and "ensuring they have the support they need."

"This action was a difficult, but necessary, measure to ensure continued, meaningful investment in Sonos' product roadmap while setting Sonos up for long term success," Spence said.

Sonos is also reducing some of its customer support offices and will close one in Amsterdam later this year, according to The Verge.

The company previously cut around 7% of its workforce in June 2023, a month after it announced a 24% revenue drop in the second quarter compared to the previous year.

Cisco announced two rounds of layoffs this year
cisco
The cuts comprised 5% of the networking company's workforce.

REUTERS/Mike Blake

In February, networking company Cisco announced it was slashing 5% of its workforce, upward of 4,000 jobs, Bloomberg reported.

The company said it was restructuring after an industry-wide pullback in corporate tech spending — which execs said they expect to continue through the first half of the year.

On August 14, in a filing, Cisco said it would further reduce its global workforce by 7% amid sales and revenue declines. Reuters reported earlier that the company was slashing around 4,000 jobs as it shifted attention to cybersecurity and artificial intelligence.

Per its latest annual filing, Cisco had about 85,000 employees as of July 2023.

GoPro is laying off nearly 140 employees
GoPro camera on white table
GoPro will go through a second round of layoffs in 2024.

David Becker via Getty Images

Long-troubled GoPro is laying off 15% of its 925 current employees, the company said in a filing.

The action sports camera maker reported a net loss of nearly $48 million in the quarter that ended in June, adding to a streak of consecutive losses.

The company laid off 4% of its staff in March.

Shell is reportedly planning for major cuts in its oil exploration division
Shell logo
Shell plans for major layoffs in its oil and gas exploration division.

INA FASSBENDER/Getty Images

Oil giant Shell will slash its workforce in oil and gas exploration and development by 20%, according to an August 29 report from Reuters. Company sources reportedly cited intentions to cut costs in the highly profitable segments due to "deep cuts in renewables and low-carbon businesses."

Exploration, wells development, and subsurface units will face hundreds of layoffs globally, with offices in Houston, The Hauge, and Britain expected to take the biggest hit, the sources told Reuters.

A Shell spokesperson would not comment directly on the layoffs but told Business Insider that, "Shell aims to create more value with less emissions by focusing on performance, discipline and simplification across the business."

"That includes delivering structural operating cost reductions of $2-3 billion by the end of 2025, as announced at our Capital Markets Day event in June 2023," the spokesperson added.

Goldman Sachs plans to lay off more than 1,300 workers, The Wall Street Journal reported
Goldman Sachs logo
Goldman Sachs has already begun cuts, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

The global investment bank is set to cut hundreds of employees during annual reviews this year, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the situation.

Goldman Sachs is targeting low performers with the intention of laying off between 3% and 4% of its global workforce, equaling somewhere between 1,300 and 1,800 people, according to the outlet.

The cuts are already underway and will continue in the coming months, one person told the outlet. Goldman typically tries to cut anywhere from 2% to 7% of employees each year, per The Journal.

Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop is cutting 18% of staff
Gwyneth Paltrow speaks at the In goop Health Summit in Los Angeles in 2021.
Gwyneth Paltrow speaks at the In Goop Health Summit in Los Angeles in 2021. The wellness company is laying off 18% of its staff amid a strategy shift.

Rachel Murray/Getty Images for goop

Goop is cutting 18% of its 216-person staff, citing a change to its organization, WWD wrote in September. It will now focus on beauty, fashion, and food — specifically its Goop Beauty and good.clean.goop beauty brands, G.Label clothing line, and Goop Kitchen restaurants.

That means it's moving away from wellness, home, travel, and sexual wellness, some of which are categories that once defined the brand.

Samsung plans to cut jobs globally this year, Reuters reported
Samsung logo displayed on a phone
Samsung is planning global job cuts in 2024.

SOPA Images/Getty Images

Samsung is planning to cut jobs this year, a move that will impact workers in the US, Europe, Asia, and Africa, Reuters reported.

The electronic devices maker will cut up to 30% of staff in some divisions, the report says. It is unclear how many jobs will be impacted.

Samsung told Reuters in a statement that the workforce adjustments would not impact its production staff and that no specific targets for the cuts are in place.

Verizon is laying off 4,800 US employees
People walking by a Verizon location
Verizon will let go of 4,800 US-based management employees by March 2025.

Kena Betancur/VIEWpress/Getty Images

Verizon is letting go of 4,800 US-based management employees in a voluntary separation program.

The company said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that more than half of these employees would exit in September, while the rest will leave by the end of March 2025.

The telecommunications giant expects severance charges to cost as much as $1.9 billion before tax in the third quarter of this year.

General Motors is laying off about 1,700 employees in Kansas
GM logo at General Motors headquarters
General Motors is laying off about 1,700 employees at its Fairfax plant in Kansas.

Rebecca Cook/Reuters

General Motors is laying off 1,695 employees at its Fairfax plant in Kansas, the company said in a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification notice in mid-September.

The layoffs will begin in mid-November, and a second phase will continue in January, Reuters reported, citing a GM spokesperson. It is unclear which departments will be affected, but about 1,450 of these employees will be laid off temporarily, the spokesperson said.

In August, the carmaker laid off over 1,000 workers, or 1.3% of its workforce.

The August layoffs came primarily from GM's software and services business, which it had bulked up over the past few years. Last year, the company brought on two former Apple executives to run the unit.

Flexport conducts second round of layoffs in 2024
Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen began rescinding job offers on Friday.
Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen returned to the company in September.

Sam Barnes/Sportsfile for Collision via Getty Images

US logistics startup Flexport is laying off another 2% of its US staff this week as it aims to cut costs and reorganizes its retail delivery business.

The fulfillment center-focused cuts amount to about 40 people and were first reported by The Information, citing an internal memo.

In January, Flexport cut 15% of its staff, or around 400 people. Those cuts came after Flexport founder and CEO Ryan Petersen initiated a 20% reduction of its workforce of an estimated 2,600 employees in October 2023.

Flexport kicked off 2024 with the announcement that it raised $260 million from Shopify and made "massive progress toward returning Flexport to profitability."

NYCB's Flagstar Bank cuts 700 jobs
Flagstar bank branch
NYCB's Flagstar Bank is cutting 700 jobs as part of a business overhaul.

Facebook/Adobe Stock/BI

New York Community Bancorp's Flagstar Bank will cut 8% of its workforce, or 700 jobs, as it aims to revamp its business, the company's CEO, Joseph Otting, said in a statement on October 17.

An additional 1,200 employees will be laid off at the end of the quarter after the company sells its residential mortgage business.

NYCB is also changing its name to Flagstar Financial as part of the turnaround efforts after losses from its commercial real estate portfolio.

Chief, a networking group for female executives, made cuts across the company
Chief cofounders Lindsay Kaplan and Carolyn Childers speak onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2022.
Chief, cofounded by Lindsay Kaplan and Carolyn Childers, laid off staff.

Kimberly White/Getty Images for TechCrunch.

Chief, which has positioned itself as the nation's largest network of senior executive women, confirmed to Business Insider on October 20 that it has shed roles.

The company told BI that the cuts, which had already been announced internally, mainly impacted "our technology and administrative functions."

"Like many companies, we are balancing growth and profitability," the spokesperson added.

In a June press release, the American company said 40% of its members were C-suite executives and that they represent more than 10,000 companies.

In April 2023, Chief cut 14% of its workforce in what the founders called a "challenging economic environment," TechCrunch reported at the time.

This January, the company said it would close its London offices — opened one year previously — to refocus on the American market.

Visa will reportedly lay off around 1,400 people
Visa card close up
Visa plans to lay off around 1,400 people by the end of the year, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto/Getty Images

Visa plans to lay off around 1,400 workers this year, The Wall Street Journal reported on October 29.

In a statement provided to BI, a Visa spokesperson said the company expects to grow its workforce for the foreseeable future but that it is continuously evolving to serve clients, innovate, and grow, "which can lead to the elimination of some roles."

"When this happens, we are committed to supporting our employees," the spokesperson added.

Workers affected by layoffs included employees and contractors, with more than 1,000 in technology roles, the Journal reported, citing unnamed sources familiar with the situation. Visa has more than 30,000 employees.

Dropbox is slashing around 20% of its global workforce
Dropbox CEO Drew Houston
Dropbox CEO Drew Houston announced the company is laying off around 20% of its workforce.

Reuters/ Mike Blake

The cloud storage company is laying off 528 employees, targeting "over-invested or underperforming" areas, CEO Drew Houston announced in an email sent to employees.

"As CEO, I take full responsibility for this decision and the circumstances that led to it, and I'm truly sorry to those impacted by this change," Houston wrote.

The Dropbox chief cited diminishing demand and macro headwinds in the company's core business, as well as excessive management levels, as contributing factors.

The layoffs come as the company is undergoing a "transitional period" with its growing File Sync and Share (FSS) business and greater efforts on products like Dash, Dropbox's AI-powered work assistant.

KPMG plans to cut nearly 4% of its US audit workforce.
KPMG logo
KPMG plans to lay off about 330 people in its US audit workforce.

Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Consulting giant KPMG informed about 330 people, or less than 4%, in its US audit workforce that they would be laid off within the next couple of weeks, a spokesperson told BI.

"The actions reflect our ongoing focus to align the size, shape and skills of our workforce to the market, while addressing continued low levels of attrition," the spokesperson said in a written statement.

This follows an earlier round of layoffs in March, as well as another one last summer, that also affected the company's audit unit, similarly due to low levels of voluntary exits, the spokesperson said.

Nissan said it will slash 9,000 jobs globally.
The Nissan logo on the rear of a 2024 Nissan Z sports car.
Nissan said it will cute 20% of its staff.

Benjamin Zhang/Business Insider

Japanese automobile giant Nissan said during its November earnings release that it would be cutting 9,000 jobs in an attempt to save money.

The car company reported lower revenue for the period, which it attributed to higher selling and production costs. Nissan said it brought in about 32 million yen, or $208 million, at the end of the first half of the fiscal year — a steep drop from the $1.4 billion it reported for the same time last year.

In addition to a 20% production capacity reduction, CEO Makoto Uchida will give up 50% of his compensation and other executives have taken voluntary pay cuts.

NASA JPL plans to cut about 5% of its workforce.
mars curiosity rover
Mars Curiosity rover at the John Klein site.

NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California is cutting its workforce for the second time this year.

In November, the agency announced it plans to lay off 325 employees, or about 5% of its workforce. The cuts follow a round of layoffs in February, where JPL cut 530 employees.

"Although we can never have perfect insight into the future, I sincerely believe that after this action we will be at a more stable workforce level moving forward," JPL Director Laurie Leshin wrote in a company-wide memo.

Leshin added that the reductions affect all areas of JPL including technical, project, business, and support areas. The layoffs are the result of "continued funding challenges" Leshin wrote.

JPL is responsible for some of NASA's most daring feats like landing the Curiosity rover on Mars and guiding Voyagers 1 and 2 into interstellar space.

Associated Press will lay off 8% of its global staff.
A man walks out of Associated Press headquarters.
Associated Press will lay off 8% of its staff, the company announced in November.

Mario Tama/Getty Images

The Associated Press in November announced plans to reduce its staff by 8% through a combination of buyouts and layoffs.

"This is about ensuring AP's important role as the only truly independent news organization at scale during a period of transformation in the media industry," The Associated Press said in a statement about the cuts.

The union representing a portion of AP members indicated 121 of its guild members would be offered buyouts before layoffs began, per AP.

Less than half of the expected cuts will involve news employees, the outlet reported, and though the AP has bureaus around the world, a majority of the staff reduction will occur within the United States.

Sotheby's laid off 100 workers.
Sotheby's logo and filled room
Sotheby's laid off 100 workers in its New York offices.

Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images

Sotheby's cut 100 employees from its New York offices on Tuesday, the company confirmed to multiple publications. The layoffs include back-office workers, junior staffers, and specialists, reports said.

The layoffs come as the auction market has experienced a recent slowdown in sales and earnings. The company also previously cut about 50 employees in its London location, Art News reported.

Sotheby's recently closed a deal in October for Abu Dhabi investment company ADQ to acquire a minority stake in the company. ADQ said in a press release about the deal that the $1 billion investment was meant to support Sotheby's domestic and international expansion plans.

Sotheby's did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BI.

Wells Fargo plans to cut over 700 workers in Oregon.
wells fargo
Wells Fargo plans to cut over 700 workers in Oregon locations.

REUTERS/ Shannon Stapleton

Wells Fargo filed two WARN notices on December 4 sharing plans to lay off over 700 workers in Oregon, including 500 people from its Hillsboro location and 221 employees from its Salem office. It also plans to shut down both offices.

The company said in its filing that it verbally notified employees of the changes on December 3, and plans to deliver formal notices for displacement in the fourth quarter of 2025. Wells Fargo said it will provide more details on impacted roles at a later time.

Those who don't get relocated into other roles within the business are eligible to receive severance based on years of service and their opportunity to use the company health plan at active rates, the filing said.

"We continue to bring the majority of our non-customer facing positions together in locations best suited for our customers and our company," a Wells Fargo spokesperson told BI. "This effort does not impact our commitment to serving customers and clients."

CVS files notice for 164 layoffs
CVS pharmacy at Target in New York City.
CVS pharmacy plans to cut 2,900 employees.

Talia Lakritz/Insider

CVS filed a WARN notice on Friday announcing 164 layoffs during a 14-day period beginning February 15.

The company shared plans in October to cut about 2,900 workers, which is less than 1% of the company, as part of a multi-year initiative to cut costs by $2 billion. The company said the vast majority of impacted workers were notified last week.

"Before taking this step, we prioritized finding cost savings everywhere we could, including closing open job postings," CVS said in a statement. "Decisions on which positions to eliminate were extremely difficult and do not diminish the value that impacted colleagues have brought to the company."

The company said most cuts would be corporate roles and wouldn't impact front line-line jobs in stores, pharmacies, and distribution centers.

The company also filed a WARN notice in October announcing 416 layoffs, 323 of which were remote. It filed another notice in November announcing 42 cuts, 30 of which were remote workers.

"We are committed to supporting these colleagues, who will receive severance pay and benefits, including access to outplacement services," the company said in a statement.

Party City announced mass layoffs
Vehicles are parked in front of a Party City in Alberta, Canada.
Party City announced mass layoffs and filed for bankruptcy protection.

Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Party City sent an email to employees about mass layoffs at its New Jersey headquarters on Friday, CBS News reported. The company filed for bankruptcy protection in the Southern District of Texas the next day.

The company said in an announcement that the decision to "wind down" followed extensive efforts to continue operations in an "immensely challenging environment driven by inflationary pressures on costs and consumer spending."

Read the original article on Business Insider

❌
❌