Citigroup to cut at least 10,000 jobs: report

A man walks out of a Citigroup banking branch in New York September 29, 2008.

(Reuters) - Citigroup Inc is cutting at least 10,000 jobs in its investment bank and other divisions throughout the world, the Wall Street Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter.

Citigroup Chief Executive Vikram Pandit and his deputies have instructed managers to slash their budgets for employee compensation by at least 25 percent, the paper said citing the people.

"We will continue to carefully manage our head count levels as we re-engineer the company in line with our stated goal and market realities," Citigroup spokeswoman Christina Pretto told the paper.

Citigroup announced last month it cut 11,000 jobs in the third quarter, bringing the total number of job cuts in 2008 to 23,000.

Citigroup aims to shrink its workforce to about 290,000 employees by next year from 352,000 as of Sept 30, the WSJ said, citing another person.

The paper also reported that Citigroup is notifying some credit card customers that their interest rates are being raised by an average of three percentage points.

A person familiar with the strategy estimated that the rate increases would apply to less than 20 percent of Citigroup's card portfolio, according to the paper.

A Citigroup spokeswoman told Reuters that she had nothing further to add to the company's comments reported by the Journal.

(Reporting by Ajay Kamalakaran in Bangalore)