HONG KONG (Reuters) – Morgan Stanley is cutting at least 50 jobs at its investment banking unit in Asia-Pacific, three people familiar with the matter said, and is cutting its operations in the region largely due to the weak Chinese market. It is the latest bank in the world to shrink.
The job cuts will affect about 13% of the Wall Street bank’s 400 Asian investment banking employees in the region, one of the people said.
Bankers based in Hong Kong and mainland China will be most affected, they said. All sources declined to be named because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
A Morgan Stanley spokeswoman declined to comment.
Bloomberg first reported the layoffs on Wednesday.
The job cuts are among the largest for a China-focused investment banking team and follow similar steps by other banks hit by a decline in trading activity in China due to the economic slowdown.
Bank of America laid off about 20 bankers in the region in January, following a wave of investment banking downsizing by UBS, Citigroup and other specialist firms.
Morgan Stanley on Tuesday reported first-quarter earnings of $2.02 per share, beating analysts’ average estimate of $1.66, according to LSEG data.
The bank’s total revenue rose to $15.14 billion from $14.5 billion in the same period last year. Investment banking revenue increased 16% compared to the same period last year.
In the Asia-Pacific region, the bank’s mergers and acquisitions advisory fees fell 41.5% to $30.4 million in the first quarter, according to data compiled by LSEG.
The bank’s equity capital markets fees, including Japan, were worth $68.5 million in the first quarter, up 26.3% from the same quarter in 2023, according to LSEG data.
(Reporting by Serena Lee, Julie Zhu and Kane Wu in Hong Kong and Scott Murdoch in Sydney; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman, Jamie Freed and Miral Fahmy)
