London's City to cut thousands of jobs in '07-'08

By Olesya Dmitracova

LONDON, Oct 7 (Reuters) - Thousands of London's financial professionals will lose their jobs over the next year as a result of the credit crunch, with many likely to face a jobless Christmas, experts say.

There will be 6,500 fewer professionals in the City of London financial hub in 2008 than this year, according to a report by Britain's Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) due to be released on Monday.

About 2,000 City jobs will be slashed by Christmas off a record high of 349,100 registered this month, said the centre's senior economist Jonathan Said.

"What we are likely to see as we enter 2008 is a reduction of almost one for every two jobs added this year," one of the CEBR report's authors Sarah Bloomfield said in a statement.

"It will feel worse than it actually is because the City has become used to adding jobs at breakneck speed."

Private equity, mergers and acquisitions, hedge funds and structured finance units will shed the largest number of jobs, the centre said.

Swiss bank UBS AG (UBSN.VX: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) said this week it would axe 1,500 jobs in its investment bank whose major centres are in London and New York. Credit Suisse (CSGN.VX: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) also said it would let go of 170 employees in its investment banking unit.

"Clearly, there are going to be more job cuts, especially from the likes of Citi where we can expect the highest," said Shaun Springer, chief executive of London-based recruitment firm Napier Scott, in reference to Citigroup (C.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz).