Morgan Stanley has cut about 2% of its staff, according to people familiar with the layoffs. The moves, first reported by CNBC, affected about 1,600 of the company’s 81,567 employees and touched nearly every corner of the global investment bank.
At the New York bank, known for its huge wealth management division and top-tier trading and advisory operations, financial advisers are one of the few categories of workers exempt from the cuts. Morgan Stanley is following rival Goldman Sachs and other firms like Citigroup and Barclays in reinstating a Wall Street ritual that had been suspended during the Coronavirus pandemic: the annual weeding out of underperformers. Banks typically cut 1% to 5% of those they deem weaker workers before bonuses are paid, leaving more money for the remaining employees. The industry halted this practice in 2020 after the pandemic sparked a two-year boom in operations, but operations have largely halted this year due to the Federal Reserve aggressively raising interest rates . The last company-wide layoff at Morgan Stanley was in 2019.