BofA said to cut dozens of traders, bankers as revenue drops

NEW YORK – Bank of America Corp. is cutting dozens of jobs across the firm’s trading and banking divisions after CEO Brian Moynihan pledged to trim expenses amid a decline in trading revenue, according to two people with knowledge of the plans.

Senior employees being cut Tuesday include Alison Ferreira, a managing director and former co-head of New York equity sales, and Frank Laino, a managing director overseeing the Internet, health-care and small-cap trading teams, according to the people, who asked not to be identified speaking about personnel matters.

Wall Street firms have been cutting jobs amid a multi-year slowdown in trading revenue. Moynihan, 55, said this month that third-quarter revenue from that business declined about 5 percent as sluggish fixed-income markets dragged down results. A drop of that magnitude would bring trading revenue at the Charlotte, North Carolina-based company to about $3.27 billion for the quarter. Citigroup Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. also forecast a decline for the business.

Weaker revenue

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“If the revenue environment weakens or the interest-rate structures don’t move up and the economy slows down, we’ll have to take out more costs to keep them in line with our revenues,” Moynihan said on Sept 17.

Bank of America’s cuts may result in hundreds of job losses, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter.

Kristen Kaus, a Bank of America spokeswoman, declined to comment on the dismissals.

Tom Morgan, a director and 10-year Merrill Lynch veteran; Tim Hlavacek, in specialty sales of utilities; and Tara Dougherty and Jeffrey Peters, both vice presidents in equity sales, were also let go Tuesday, according to the people. The former employees didn’t reply to messages left on work or personal phones and to e-mails sent through LinkedIn.

The five largest Wall Street firms – JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley – generated $73.7 billion from trading last year, with about two-thirds of that coming from the fixed-income units and one- third from equities. The total was down from $88.7 billion in 2010, with substantially all of the decline coming in fixed- income, according to data from Bloomberg Intelligence.

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