Goldman Sachs to Cut Fewer Than 250 Jobs During Investment Banking Slump

Goldman Sachs Group will be cutting fewer than 250 jobs across a range of roles.

The move could be made within weeks and is the third round of cuts at the company since September 2022, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported Tuesday (May 30).

A source familiar with the matter confirmed to PYMNTS by phone that there will be fewer than 250 job cuts and that the cuts will be across a variety of roles at Goldman Sachs.

The latest cuts are due to a continuing slowdown of investment bank deal-making on Wall Street, according to the WSJ report.

These layoffs follow a few hundred made in September 2022 as part of “normal management of staffing levels” and another 3,200 positions being eliminated in January, the report said.

Goldman Sachs and other investment banks expected a recovery of deal-making in the first half of the year but haven’t seen it yet. At Goldman Sachs, the fees brought in by investment bankers in the first quarter were 26% lower than they were a year ago, per the report.

The firm has been pivoting more fully to Wall Street and serving enterprise clients.

Its management sees a greenfield opportunity in transaction banking, where $74 million in revenues represented 10% growth year on year, Goldman Sachs reported April 18 in an earnings report.

Job cuts have been seen across Wall Street due to a challenging macroeconomic environment in which there are fewer mergers and share offerings happening amidst high interest rates, global tensions and rising inflation, Reuters reported in December 2022.

Before the cuts at Goldman Sachs in January, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup had reduced their ranks, according to the report.

“GS [Goldman Sachs] needs to show that its costs are as variable as its revenues, especially after a year in which it provided special rewards to top managers during the boom times,” Wells Fargo banking analyst Mike Mayo told Reuters in December.

The news of the latest job cuts at Goldman Sachs comes four days after it was reported that JPMorgan Chase has eliminated 500 positions, most being technology and operations roles.

The cuts were made across the bank’s divisions, CNBC reported Friday (May 26).