In terms of the severance expenses, 1,600 of those reductions were “funded” in the second quarter, implying that 3,400 were in Q1. Nevertheless, it feels like it might be significant that at an investor conference yesterday, CFO Mark Mason said that “As I sit here in the second quarter, we have, at this stage, year-to-date, but between now - between the first quarter and now, we have incurred costs, severance costs associated with about 5,000 head count that we will be reducing across the firm, largely in banking, markets and functions”. Of course, the ICG includes securities services, treasury services and corporate lending, all quite labour-intensive industries which don’t have similarly sized direct counterparts at the other big US banks.

That’s almost as many people as the entire workforce of Morgan Stanley, and significantly more than Goldman Sachs. It’s sometimes easy to forget exactly how big an investment bank Citigroup is as of its last annual report there were nearly 75,000 employees in its Institutional Clients Group.

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