HONG KONG (Reuters) – Morgan Stanley is cutting at least 50 investment banking jobs in the Asia-Pacific region due to a deals slump, two sources with knowledge of the matter said.
The layoffs affect around 13% of the Wall Street bank’s Asia investment banking workforce of 400 in the region, according to one of the sources.
Bankers based in Hong Kong and mainland China are going to be affected the most, they said. All of the sources declined to be named as they were not authorised to speak to media.
A Morgan Stanley spokesperson declined to comment.
Bloomberg reported the job cuts first on Wednesday.
In the Asia-Pacific region, merger and acquisition advisory fees for the bank in the first quarter dropped 41.5% to $30.4 million, according to data compiled by LSEG.
(This story has been corrected to fix the source of M&A fees to LSEG, not company results, in paragraph 6)
(Reporting by Selena Li, Julie Zhu and Kane Wu in Hong Kong, Scott Murdoch in Sydney; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman and Jamie Freed)