AT&T, Credit Suisse to cut jobs as meltdown drags on

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Singapore: AT&T Inc, the largest US phone company, will cut 12,000 jobs, striving to trim expenses as the US economy falters. The reductions amount to about 4% of the workforce, Dallas-based AT&T said on Thursday in a statement. The company plans to record $600 million in expenses for severance this quarter. The reductions would bring AT&T’s total job cuts to more than 25,000 this year. The carrier and its smaller competitors are grappling with slowing consumer spending and a jobless rate at its highest level in 14 years.

The carrier also plans to reduce spending next year to cope with the slowdown, with plans to give specific forecasts for 2009 spending plans in late January.

The carrier said it’s still adding jobs in its wireless and video units. In July, the company said it would eliminate 10,000 jobs to reduce overlap in some departments after its 2006 purchase of BellSouth Corp. Before that, the company announced 4,650 cuts, some in its home-phone business, which has lost customers to cable operators and wireless competitors.

Meanwhile, Credit Suisse and Nomura Holdings announced big job cuts on Thursday, further evidence the global financial crisis is unrelenting for an industry battered by heavy losses and weak markets.

The 5,300 layoffs by the Swiss bank and a further 1,000 in London by Japan’s biggest broker are the latest in the global financial sector which has now seen over 150,000 jobs culled since September when Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy. Of these, more than 50,000 were at Citigroup, which has made more writedowns than any other bank in the world during the crisis. While the axe had been falling for months in the industry, Lehman’s fall sparked carnage in financial markets and reshaped the industry landscape, resulting in job losses from New York to Singapore to Mumbai.

“I dont think people really know what’s next. It depends on sentiment, which will in turn drive credit markets, which in turn will weigh on banks or not,” said a London-based equities trader.