Coldplay may have answered EMI's rumored hopes
Elizabeth Taylor and Kathy Ireland walk away from jewelry company
More controls not the answer for China
KKR still has IPO envy?
Liquidnet looks for IPO liquidity
Energy Recovery: a cleantech deal hits the IPO market
Booze a defensive play in a bear market
Dollar rises vs euro after ECB's Trichet signals one rate hike may be enough
Who will make the next generation of thinner TVs: Samsung, Sony, Panasonic or Toshiba?_thumbnail.gif){kind=logo}
Analyst downgrades: NVDA, AFLYY and UNH
Sprint Nextel finally in the midst of a turnaround?
U.S. weekly jobless claims pass 400k, signaling further economic slowing
Blockbuster could come back for Circuit City?
Yahoo! (YHOO) looks for another partner
Before the bell: AMR, GOOG, AAPL
Lehman issuing stock to employees smells of desperation
UBS (NYSE:UBS) is making a bid to increase the unemployment rate all on its own. The bank will lay-off 5,500 people, mostly investment bankers. It will also sell a package of $15 billion portfolio of subprime mortgages to Blackrock (NYSE:BLK). According to Reuters,"UBS cautioned that conditions in financial markets were still tough and declined to offer any results forecast."
The UBS comments about what happens next are a coded message that layoffs at the firm may not be over. UBS has suffered as much or more from subprime write-downs as any bank in the US or abroad.
The news is especially bad for people employed at brokerages and big banks. A continuing spike in mortgage defaults could cause more difficulty in the pool of financial instruments created around the market. That, in turn, could cause more write-offs at large banks triggering the need to raise capital and cut costs.
Tens of thousands of people have been fired on Wall Street already. The news out of UBS shows that the process is far from over.
Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.
