Citigroup, the owner of Citibank among other banking properties and one of the largest financial institutions in the country, has announced so many layoffs and cutbacks recently that it's getting hard for anyone to keep track.

Yesterday the bank announced it will be laying off 'thousands' of employees in its investment banking division. All told, 10% of the 65,000-member group will get the axe.

All of this stems from the big sub-prime crisis and mortgage debacle fallout. Meredith Whitney, the biz babe/finance hottie/psycho dominatrix pain mistress, who called out Citi back in the fall of '07 started the trend of predicting that this 'Citi' wasn't built on a strong foundation. (Ya see what I did there?)

After that melee, Citi fired their CEO and hired the impishly adorable Vikram Pandit to take the reigns. One of his big moves was changing the company's slogan by instilling the virtues of insomnia.

Since then, there has been a slew of announcements coming from Citi amounting to thousands and thousands of 'proposed layoffs'. Even the AP is having trouble with all of them:

It was not immediately clear if the reported job cuts would be in addition to cuts announced by Citigroup in April. After reporting a $5.1 billion first-quarter loss, the bank said then it was reducing its staff by 9,000, in addition to the 4,200 job cuts the bank announced late last year.

As you can see, it's tough keeping up with all this. It also seems like the big 'C' doesn't know which way is up either. 11 months ago, Citi purchased Vikram Pandit's old hedge fund, Old Lane Partners, for $800 million. Good buy, right? Wrong, more like 'Goodbye', because earlier this month that fund closed for good. (Did ya catch that one? I'm on fire today!)

So in conclusion, a summary for everyone trying to keep track of where Citi is at right now: sucking, big time.

AP: Citi To Slash Investment Banking Jobs, June 22, 2008

The big banks on Wall Street have significantly improved their diabolical ways of axing employees.

Long gone are the days of the 1987 stock market crash, where whole departments were herded into large conference rooms to hear they were collectively fired. The current economic situation requires a lot more tact and finesse, or maybe not.

A story in the New York Times today describes the large numbers of Wall Streeters getting sent packing because of the current economic downturn. Citigroup, Morgan Stanely, Lehman Brothers, Credit Suisse, JP Morgan, Merrill Lynch and of course, Bear Stearns are all mentioned in the downsizing battle. The strategy seems to be:

1. Announce problems due to the credit crunch/sub-prime/recession fears/ weather/global warming, etc.
2. Lay off several thousand employees in a big firing blitz
3. Stay cool for a few weeks
4. Pick and choose several departments to ax over the next few weeks.
5. Repeat steps 2 through 4
6. Rinse

Even our own favorite biz babe, Meredith Whitney stepped into the fray. Quoted in the NYT article as saying:

“People will try to delay them for as long as possible,” Meredith Whitney, the banking analyst at Oppenheimer & Company, said of the layoffs, which she thinks are far from over. “It cuts to the bone.”

The hardest part about all of this was seeing all the incredibly awkward ways they delivered the metaphorical 'pink slip.':

The first clue that someone is gone can be e-mail messages that are returned to senders from a former colleague’s inactivated corporate address.

Ouch, harsh one! But it gets better:

Some Lehman Brothers investment bankers found out their jobs were in peril when they saw cardboard boxes and dumpster bins in the hallways in March.

"Uh... yeah. Everyone do me a favor and please ignore the boxes with your corresponding names and the phrase 'terminated' written in Sharpie."

But while all those 'gym rats and spa swans' are having the time of their lives over at Bear Stearns, women like this were getting the shit end of the stick:

In January, when Ms. JoAnne Kennedy was temporarily out of the office at JPMorgan because of surgery, her boss called to say her job had been eliminated. She did not return to her office and ended up asking the bank to send her the photos of her son that she kept on her desk.

The article also goes on to say how Tuesdays, Wednesday, and Thursdays are becoming the 'hottest' firing days in the financial industry. The thinking behind it is that the weekend leaves too much time for employees to stew over their redundancies.

Personally, I would much rather hear about it on a Friday, so I may spend the better part of the weekend crafting a hate-filled letter to my former boss who left me out to dry.

Let us know in the comments section some of the best/worst ways you've heard of 'letting someone go'.

New York Times: For Wall Street Workers, Axe Falls Quietly, May 16, 2008

We reported on Tuesday that most of Bear Stearns' employees were just lounging around at the office all day, basically getting paid to go to the gym and relax at the spa. That is, until JP Morgan completes its takeover of the deflated investment bank next month. But what else are those crazy kids up to?

Corey Lorinsky from ClusterStock interviewed a young Bear Stearns employee who described his short lifespan at the failed company in a little more detail:

Summer Training:

From the day I got there, I knew things weren't right. When we were doing Thompson training, the lady teaching the class was using Bear Stearns as an example stock. Every time she came back to the main research page, after she showed us some software feature, Bear's stock was down another $5.

On The Job:

When I got there, the job didn't seem like the horror stories I had heard. Most of the first-years weren't very busy. We would routinely congregate around each other's desks and have hour-long discussions about how crappy the market was doing.

The Crash:

The daily anti-Fed-bailout protests in our lobby were the worst. Didn't these people know they were at the wrong place? Didn't they know the people at JP Morgan still have jobs?

On Jimmy Cayne (former Bear Stearns CEO) smoking pot:

The senior level bankers pretended not to let it bother them. They printed out the pictures and pasted them all over the walls. But in reality, you could tell they were really nervous about Bear's future. They probably should have been smoking pot, too.

Now:

I'm still going into the office and being worked hard. My boss pretends that if I do quality work, I'll get an offer from JP. I wouldn't bet on it. A lot of other people just come into the office when they have to print something. Like their resumes.

There was another interesting story from the New York Times last month about a whole bunch of young college graduates whining that they were screwed out of their jobs at Bear Stearns after the company's collapse.

I understand it's a real pain to be stuck without a job but when you look into these kids' backgrounds you see they come from very wealthy families with expensive degrees from top colleges. They are the cream of the crop and this bump in the road is merely just a small setback in their otherwise very well-endowed lives. A lot of them even have other offers to 'fall-back on', as if a $70k entry-level-job with a big Wall Street bank can really be considered a 'safety option'.

And plus, since there is no way an entry level analyst could be held accountable for the Bear debacle, it will make for a great story on future job interviews -
"I see you were at Bear Stearns in March of 08?! Wowzers, tell me all about that one! Oh wait, better yet... you're just hired. You can tell me all about it on your first day, Mr. New Vice President."

Know anyone involved in all these Bear shenanigans? Shout it out in the comments.

ClusterStock: My Life At Bear Stearns: Not Just Sitting Around Waiting To Get Fired!, May 14, 2008