Barclays Capital is said to have given IT contractor staff until Friday to agree to cut their rates by 10% or be terminated. The staff are also said to have been told that they will be expected to take a 10-day holiday before the end of December (which can include the Christmas break).
Some firms are thought to have already re-aligned contractor pay to reflect current market conditions, others are expected to swiftly follow.
In the meantime, MF Global staff around the world are rocking up to the office mostly in suits these days - ready to go for a new job interview at a moment's notice.
And HSBC has given its broadest hint yet that it might quit the UK, stating that it now costs around $2.5bn-a-year to comply with the increased regulations there. A decision to move the bank's HQ (probably to Hong Kong) is now thought likely to be made next year.
Credit Agricole has posted a 65% fall in Q3 net profit (to $349.4m), after Greek government-debt writedowns. Bank CEO Jean-Paul Chifflet warned that 'it will take (the Eurozone) several years' to get over the current crisis.
Goldman Sachs has once again topped the 'headline' league table, receiving 15.9% of all Wall Street media mentions in the first 10 months of the year. According to a study undertaken by HighBeam Research, HSBC came in 2nd (13.9%), followed by Deutsche Bank (12%), and Morgan Stanley (11%).
Finally, US celebrity chef Mario Batali has apologized to bankers for comments he made which appeared to liken them to Hitler and Stalin. The remarks caused uproar in the US among the (sensitive) New York banking community, several of whom threatened to steer clear of his establishments in future. Batali said it was 'never my intention to equate our banking industry with Hitler and Stalin, two of the most evil, brutal dictators in modern history'.
Sources - The Register, fins.com, Fox Business, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Dow Jones, Reuters, BBC, The New York Post
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