Mass redundancies could be afoot over the next few months in London as fears over a global financial meltdown ramp up.
Credit Suisse workers will be paying close attention to developments in Switzerland as the company undergoes a forced takeover from rival UBS.
This includes many in London, who are believed to take up around 5,000 of the Credit Suisse workforce, while UBS has around 6,000 working for them from the British capital.
David Buik of the Aquis Exchange told GB News he expects around 2,000 workers across London to lose their jobs in the coming months.
David Buik says he is expecting many in Canary Wharf to lose their jobs
GB News / PA
He told Mark Longhurst: “If you add both banks together on a global basis they have approximately 125,000 employees.
“Both have approximately 5,000 in London. The problem is, there is rather a lot of synergy between both banks as they go for wealth management.
“They will be cherry picking going along the line and Credit Suisse has got some good people.
“All in all, I think the general consensus of opinion is that in a few months, around 2,000 people will lose their jobs out of 10,000 in London.”
Credit Suisse workers will be harbouring fears over their futures
GB News
Credit Suisse workers are based in Canary Wharf, while UBS staff are based mostly at Broadgate.
The latter rescued the former in a £2.5billion takeover in a desperate bid to restore confidence in markets as fears loom over a re-run of the 2008 financial crash.
Markets remained febrile on Monday, and banks including Credit Suisse are likely to begin axing jobs as a result.
Buik added that the developments in Switzerland mean we are likely to see volatility in the markets “for some time”.
He said: “What’s worth pointing out at the moment is the fact that this supposed banking crisis is very different to what happened in 2008-2009.
“That was a time when the Treasury Secretary said he wasn’t going to bail out Lehman Brothers.
“The result of which meant there was no possibility of trading off some of their debt which would have meant the losses were significantly less.
“This has been grasped by the central banks on a global basis.
“All the central banks now seem to be four squares behind each other saying ‘look, regulation is quite tough now compared to 15 years ago, banks need 10x the amount of capital to do the same amount of business as they did 10 years ago’.
“The idea that they aren’t on the case pretty regularly is very strong. That’s not to say someone else might not fall by the wayside, but to say that this is a crisis that will affect the rest of the world is, I think, a little far from reality.”
Stock markets across Asia dropped drastically overnight and FTSE 100 fell on Monday morning before recovering last ground.
Barclays shares lost 7p, dropping to 133p at one point, while HSBC saw a fall of 17p, bringing it down to 525p.
An internal memo to staff at Credit Suisse urged staff to come into the office as normal and their bonuses and pay rises will be dished out on Friday as promised.