JP Morgan axes 70 jobs in restructure

JP Morgan's Hong Kong office bore the brunt of the investment bank's drive to cut costs yesterday as about 70 SAR-based jobs were axed, almost 20 per cent of the local payroll.

Across the region, the US-based bank said that it was cutting 100 employees, or about 5 per cent of its regional staff, as part of a global restructuring.

A JP Morgan spokesman in Hong Kong said: 'It's not the cost element that has driven this decision.' The decision had been expected after the bank confirmed on Tuesday that 700 of its 16,900 staff around the world were set to be made redundant.

This is the latest in a string of lay-offs in the financial services industry that have come as firms slash staff numbers to cope with a dramatic downturn in the region's markets.

'Some activities will be refocused and some scaled back to adapt to changed conditions,' the bank said in a statement.

Chief executive Douglas Warner told staff there was a need to rein in costs and boost productivity. JP Morgan's revenues have not kept pace with the growth in costs over the past three years.

'[The Asian reductions] are almost totally driven by changing client needs, which have been caused by the change in the markets,' the JP Morgan spokesman said, adding that no further large-scale clear-outs were envisaged.