Citigroup’s investment bank will shed up to half of its 20,000 technology and operations staff in the next five years, according to the division’s head, as machines supplant humans at a faster pace. The prediction by Jamie Forese, president of Citi and chief executive of the bank’s institutional clients group, was the starkest among investment banking bosses in a series of FT interviews to mark the 10th anniversary of the financial crisis.
Mr Forese said the operational positions, which make up almost two-fifths of investment bank employees at Citi, were “most fertile for machine processing”. “We’ve got 20,000 operational roles. Over the next five years could you make it 10,000?” he added, in comments that had echoes of former Deutsche Bank chief executive John Cryan’s claim that up to half of the German bank’s workforce could be replaced by technology. READ MORE
