Layoffs Feared as Lehman Brothers Cuts Back

Employees at Lehman Brothers trudged into work yesterday terrified they would be next to join the thousands of bankers in recent months who, after receiving a dreaded call from their human resources department, never returned to their desks.

"Two people were let go in our group this morning, and from what I can tell, it isn't close to being over," one Lehman Brothers employee based in New York, who did not have authority to speak on the record, said. "There are no grand goodbyes, it's more like the HR ... just comes in and the next thing you know, they are gone."

Yesterday marked the start of the latest round of layoffs for the fourth-largest American securities firm by market value, with some 1,400 jobs expected to be cut. This is on top of the 5,000 jobs the firm has already eliminated in the past 10 months.

The pink slips came on a day when a Citigroup analyst cut Lehman Brothers' earnings estimate for the second quarter to $0.05 a share from $1.66 a share, sending the stock down 1.95% to $42.79. "While the environment seems to have improved considerably in May, it will not offset the considerable weakness in March and April," the analyst, Prashant Bhatia, wrote in a note to clients. He also cut earnings estimates for Goldman Sachs Group and Morgan Stanley.

Lehman Brothers, which employs 28,080 people in America as of the first quarter, declined to comment on the job cuts. The layoffs are expected to affect all divisions of the company across the globe, although there will be a few areas that will be spared, including groups working to expand the bank's presence in Asia, the commodities capital markets groups, and some emerging markets.

The decision to cut jobs is a departure from the bank's strategy following the dot com bust, when Lehman Brothers embarked on a hiring spree.

"In 2000 through 2002, Lehman didn't lay off anyone — in fact, they were hiring, and used that as proof of how strong the company was," a banking analyst at Ladenburg Thalman & Co., Richard Bove, said. "This time around they are laying people off, suggesting they are in a weaker position."

Lehman Brothers is not the only bank laying off workers, with some 65,000 jobs cut worldwide by financial institutions since the subprime market crisis began. With many of the banks based in New York City, the job cuts will hurt the local economy, analysts say. The finance industry was responsible for nearly one third of all wages earned in the city last year, with each Wall Street job supporting the equivalent of three workers in other sectors, according to the city comptroller's office. According to estimates at Moody's Economy.com, banks will let go about 25,000 jobs in the New York area.

"There will not be a lot of sympathy in the general public for the continued wave of layoffs, but every New Yorker should shed a tear or two," the chief executive of the research firm Wall Street Strategies, Charles Payne, wrote in an e-mail. "Just consider the Broadway strike late last year, which cost, by most estimates, $2 million a day and crushed the holiday hopes of waiters, tour guides and other New Yorkers in the process."

Already, he said, the real estate market is showing some early signs of softening, while manufacturing has stagnated and overall job numbers slip. "Every New Yorker, even the most jealous of us, should lament this wave of layoffs because it will eventually reach those aforementioned waiters and tour guides, as well as construction workers, car dealers, and those same folks on Broadway who shot themselves in the foot with their job walk off."

Not everyone considered the Lehman Brothers decision to reduce its head count a major event. "It doesn't represent a signal that there has been an additional new downturn," the managing partner at Wall Street headhunter Glocap Search, Adam Zoia, said. "This is rather an opportunity by Lehman to cut out some of the fat that they would probably like to do anyway, and also a signal to shareholders that they are serious about restoring their profitability to levels they had previously."

Yet while this might have been a move to assure Lehman Brothers shareholders, the stock has been trading down, and inside the firm, employees say another round of cuts is likely to happen after the summer.

"They are going to reexamine the situation at the end of the summer, so everyone is just waiting for the other shoe to drop," the Lehman Brothers employee said. "It has gotten to the point where even the people you thought were safe — they were completely overworked and pivotal to the team — even those guys are saying, 'Could it be me?'"