Goldman Sachs (GS) CEO Lloyd Blankfein Demands Deepest Cut In Years, Report Says

Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s CEO is planning for the company's most aggressive downsizing effort in years to dial back costs amid a global slump in trading, a Bloomberg report said Friday, citing sources familiar with the matter. The latest push to cut costs will be the bank’s deepest since 2011, the report said.

The news followed CEO Lloyd Blankfein’s announcement earlier in February that signaled further cost cuts at the American bank as it needed to “do a lot more on the cost side” to maintain its margins.

The company has already started trimming its operations, dismissing more support staff and is increasingly rejecting bankers’ spending on travel, hotels and entertainment unless it is directly related to serving clients, Bloomberg reported.

In July 2011, the bank said it would shave off more than $1 billion in costs, including cutting 1,000 jobs and reducing executive salaries.

The company has managed to rein in operating expenses below $23 billion for four years, before they rose 13 percent to $25 billion in 2015 due to higher litigation and regulatory costs.

"We take a particular and energetic look at continued cost cuts when revenues are stalled. ... Necessity is the mother of invention," Blankfein said in February while speaking at the Credit Suisse financial services forum.

Blankfein has also sought to contain compensation costs by employing more junior bankers even as the number of partners and senior managers has decreased 2 percent. The company has cut its compensation costs by $270 million since 2012, though its workforce has grown 11 percent during the same time period, Goldman's February presentation showed.

A slump in bond trading in recent years, along with market swings and a stiffer regulatory regime has led Goldman and many of its peers to scale back on operations. JP Morgan Chase & Co. and Bank of America Corp., which reported first-quarter results this week, have also announced deeper-than-expected cost cuts after registering a fall in revenues.