Bleak Christmas looming for Asian bankers

Bleak Christmas looming for Asian bankers

Bernice Han, Agence France-Presse, Singapore

Christmas will be bleak for Asia's once high-flying international
bankers as major institutions push ahead with plans to trim their
presence in a region still struggling to recapture its glory days
prior to the 1997-98 crisis.

After nearly three years in a fruitless wait, financial houses
have decided it is no longer worth their while to expend precious
resources in the region, especially Southeast Asia, at the
expense of the seemingly limitless opportunities in China.

"It will be tough. There will be layoffs in the future,"
Julian Leung, a Hong Kong-based equity strategist at ING Barings,
told AFP.

U.S. financial giant JP Morgan Chase, formed as a result of
Chase Manhattan Bank's acquisition of JP Morgan last year, said
it would be directing more effort into China now that Beijing has
gained membership of the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Most financial houses are blaming the lackluster performances
of the region's stock markets for the decision to scale down
their presence.

Brokerage Indosuez WI Carr Securities' deputy chief executive
Philip Desgranges said the "poor trading business" in Asian stock
markets drove the company to close research and brokerage
operations in the region.

The closure will see 50 of the 140 staff losing their jobs in
Hong Kong, he said.

Elsewhere in the region, the countdown to Christmas is also
grim even for those whose companies have yet to retrench staff.

"We've done well enough to justify our presence here. But
nobody here is a sacred cow and to think that it (job-slashing)
won't happen to us is a bit out of reality," an associate
director at PT UBS Warbug Indonesia told AFP on condition of
anonymity.

"I don't think anyone is looking for bonuses but we (have been
told we) will receive them anyway."

A technical analyst with Vickers Ballas Securities said most
investment bankers and employees of securities firms were "very
obviously concerned with downsizing" as the impact of the global
economic recession bites.

"They are constantly thinking about whether the headquarters
of their respective companies deem their operation in Indonesia
still profitable or not," the analyst said.

He cited the recent closure of the Hong Kong and Shanghai
Banking Corporation's (HSBC) stockbroking operations in Jakarta,
and of Nomura Securities in the city, as "obvious examples of the
gradual impact of the global economic recession in Southeast
Asia."

In Japan where the economy clings stubbornly to a decade-long
slump, financial institutions are also planning to cut down their
operations.

Early this month, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and Co. announced
it was making a hasty retreat from Japan's retail brokerage
market a mere 10 months after it began its operations in Tokyo.

Its announcement followed Dutch outfit ABN Amro's September
decision to shut down its domestic Japanese equities business
"with immediate effect," cutting 100 jobs in Japan and 20
elsewhere from a 250-strong workforce.