South Korea – Layoffs across brokerage houses

South Korean brokerage houses are slashing workforces as Europe’s debt crisis and the global economic slowdown bite into their profitability and their trading activities, sources said Monday.

The total number of employees at 63 local brokerage firms reached 42,388 at end-March this year, down 0.7 percent from three months earlier, according to the data from the Financial Supervisory Service and the Korea Financial Investment Association.

This is the first decrease in the sector’s workforce since the second quarter of 2009, when the local economy was recovering from damages following the collapse of the U.S. investment giant Lehman Brothers in late 2008, they said.

“Brokerages have tightened belts to cope with cloudy market conditions since the first quarter of this year,” said an official from the Korea Federation of Clerical & Financial Union…

via Layoffs swing across S. Korean brokerage houses | YONHAP NEWS.

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