The Australian office of Charles Schwab could be forced to mirror its parent company in the US which will cut its San Franciscan-based workforce by 3,400 or 13 per cent.
Director of branch management in Australia, Helen Forde, says that all of Charles Schwab’s global businesses have been asked to revise their staffing levels.
Charles Schwab Australia has around 130 staff in offices in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth.
“We’ve been asked to identify if there are any excesses in staff numbers,” Forde says. “Over the next couple of weeks we’ll be reassessing our staffing capacity.”
Charles Schwab opened its Sydney headquarters last November after trading previously as Sharetrader Australia Stockbrokers before an alliance with Kerry Packer’s e-corp, with which Charles Schwab is now involved in a 50-50 venture.
Founding chairman of the US company Charles Schwab made the grim announcement following a scaling down of its profit forecast. The 26,000 strong outfit in the US will be culled by 3400 jobs, due to a steep decline in investor trading volume.
Schwab says that the investors had lost their exuberance and was not optimistic about their return to investing in the short term.
“This period will probably go on for at least a year and probably more,” he says.
Schwab’s staff cuts in the US follows similar moves by other online brokerage houses over the last few months. Early in March, CSFB Direct slashed its staff by 10 per cent, while Ameritrade laid off 300 of their own customer-service staff representing about 12 per cent of its overall numbers.
