Morgan Stanley to Axe 1,600 Jobs Globally

Morgan Stanley (MS) announced plans to cut 1,600 job globally Thursday. Another axe fell on Wall Street.

The sixth-largets U.S. bank by assets said in a statement that the elimination will occur across some of its businesses in the first quarter of 2012, but no financial adviser jobs will be trimmed.

The scale of job cuts will amount to about 2.6 percent of the 62,648 employees the firm had at the end of September, according to the investment bank's quarterly filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Morgan Stanley just took a $1.8 billion loss Tuesday on settlement with bond insurance firm MBIA. The move will allow the company to release about $5 billion of capital due to reduced risk-weighted assets.

Instead of putting this money aside as cushion against credit losses and write-downs under the proposed Basel III, Morgan Stanley will be able to reinvest it in client-focused businesses.

In the third quarter, Morgan stanley spent $750,000 to lobby the federal government, which is 15 percent higher than the $650,000 spent in the year-ago period and a bit lower than the $760,000 spent in the second quarter of 2011, according to the company's quarterly reports filed with the House clerk's office.

Citigroup Inc.'s (C) Chief Executive Vikram Pandit said the bank will eliminate 4,500 jobs "over the next few quarters" in an effort to reduce costs on Dec. 6. The cuts represent about 1.5 percent of its global workforce of 267,000.