UBS, the world’s largest wealth manager, and other global banks have slashed thousands of jobs and taken charges of more than $20 billion on mortgage-backed securities hit by risky and non-performing loans, mostly in the United States.

„It’s got to be realistic to assume there are going to be fewer people working in the industry in the main markets, i.e. New York and London, but you can apply that to Frankfurt, Paris, and Milan just as much,” Alex Wilmot-Sitwell, global co-head of investment banking at UBS, told the Reuters Finance Summit. „I think banks are going to take a really aggressive look at head counts through this year-end process.”

Bank of America, Citigroup, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley and others have announced staff cuts. In Europe, UBS got rid of two fixed-income executives and announced 1,500 job cuts in its capital market and investment banking units after writedowns of more than 4 billion Swiss francs ($3.47 billion) in the third quarter and its first quarterly loss in five years. (The full text at Reuters)