London banks to slash 62,000 jobs

Banks may cut 62,000 jobs in London by the end of next year, reducing employment in the industry to the lowest level in more than a decade as the credit crisis worsens, the Centre for Economics and Business Research said.

Firms will eliminate 28,000 jobs in the City of London this year and 34,000 next year, the CEBR said in a report yesterday. The cuts would reduce the number of people employed in the industry to 290,847, the lowest since 1998.

The credit crunch "has spread through global markets like a virus and threatens to plunge the world into recession", Richard Snook, the CEBR's senior economist, said in the report. "We therefore do not expect a quick return to the levels of employment and prosperity that the City saw in 2006 and 2007."