Thousands of UBS employees in London are fearing the worst after the Swiss bank announced one of the biggest jobs culls since the 2008 financial crisis.
Some staff arriving for work in the City today were escorted to the UBS human resources department after finding that their employee cards no longer worked, according to sources.
They were then given a letter saying they were entitled to two weeks of paid holiday, after which they were to return to work to pick up their redundancy packages.
Across the world, 10,000 jobs will go by 2015, with 75 per cent of these losses made outside Switzerland.
UBS is taking action to shrink its investment banking arm and aims to cut staff numbers across the world from 64,000 to 54,000.
The bank employes 6,500 staff in London, two thirds of them in investment banking.
Losses
The cuts follow losses of £1.4bn in the three months to September, compared with a profit of £670m last year.
According to UBS, most of the loss was attributable to the one-off cost of restructuring its investment banking division.
UBS has also said that the botched stock market listing of social networking site Facebook cost it £227m.
A former UBS trader, Kweku Adoboli, is currently on trial accused of losing the bank £1.4bn during the financial crisis. He denies two counts of fraud and four of false accounting.
Group Chief Executive Sergio Ermotti said: “This decision has been a difficult one, particularly in a business such as ours that is all about its people.
“Some reductions will result from natural attrition and we will take whatever measures we can to mitigate the overall effect. Throughout the process we will ensure that our people will be supported and treated with care.”