Goldman Sachs Planning To Lay Off Up To 10% Of Fixed-Income Traders, Salespersons

BY:  Hajji Hassan Mohamud Hajji

Goldman Sachs Group is planning to lay off between 5 to 10 percent of its fixed-income traders and salespersons later this quarter, the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter. The reduction in the bank’s workforce, which would be steeper than its usual 5 percent annual cut, is expected to impact up to 250 people, the Journal reported.

The job cuts would reportedly be made in the bank’s debt, currencies and commodities divisions — areas that have been impacted by investors’ concerns over global economic growth and dropping commodity prices. Additionally, the onset of new regulations, which require the country’s largest banks to hold extra capital in order to withstand another financial crisis, has also forced several lenders to shrink their fixed-income trading businesses in recent months.

Last month, Goldman’s rival Morgan Stanley moved to cut 1,200 jobs, including nearly 25 percent of its debt traders and salespeople, underscoring a slump in debt-trading revenue that is likely to extend well into 2016.

According to the Wall Street Journal, which cited analysts at Barclays Bank, Goldman, which is scheduled to release its fourth-quarter results next week, is likely to report fixed-income trading revenue of $1.1 billion — down 5 percent from a year ago. And, full-year revenue is expected to drop 14 percent.

“I’m going to rely on Goldman management to know the difference between fat, and muscle and bone,” Glenn Schorr, an analyst with Evercore ISI, told the Journal. “It’s a very difficult balancing act.”

The ‘Hijacked’ Life of Migrants in Johannesburg

BY:   Al Hajjy

In 2015, more than a million migrants and refugees from the Middle East and Africa trekked north, in search of better lives on Europe’s shores.

But for thousands of African migrants, it’s a completely different journey they’ll undertake for this dream of a better life. Rather than aim for Europe, they’ll head to South Africa, one of the continent’s largest economies.

Once they get to South Africa – often entering the country illegally – they are “confronted with the realities of how difficult it is to be an immigrant in a country that is not necessarily favorable to foreigners,” says Jonathan Torgovnik, who has spent the last year photographing African migrants living in some of Johannesburg’s abandoned inner city high-rise buildings.

Torgovnik’s photographs highlight the squalid conditions in which these migrants live, with most of the “hijacked” buildings lacking electricity or running water. “I wanted to give the viewers a sense of this claustrophobic feeling of living, in my opinion, in the worst urban poverty I’ve ever seen in all my travels around the world,” he tells TIME. “I wanted to give a sense of that place, the rooms, their surroundings.”

The majority of occupants are men from Malawi, Tanzania and Zimbabwe, though other nations like Kenya and Nigeria are also represented. All hope to find a job that will allow them to send back funds to their families or bring their relatives into the country. “They come with these hopes and think they can really do something, but many of the people I met in fact did not have any work,” says Torgovnik. “It’s really quite sad to see them leaving their families, leaving everything they had and coming to this. The dream is shattered.”

JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA – JULY 19: The main and only entrance to one of the derelict ‘hijacked’ building that houses African migrants, in Johannesburg’s Inner city. The piles of rubbish that have accumulated for years, almost completely blocking the entrance. The neglected building had several fires, and does not have running water and electricity.

Meanwhile, these migrants also have to face the simmering resentment some South Africans have for foreign migrants. “There’s been a lot of xenophobia and violence in South Africa in recent years,” says Torgovnik. “[Some South Africans] feel that these African migrants are coming in and taking jobs away from them.” In April 2015, a wave of attacks targeting migrants resulted in seven deaths, with thousands of people fleeing the country.

Torgovnik is not under the illusion that his photographs will help to improve the living conditions of these migrants, but, he says, he hopes the people who drive by these buildings will gain insight into what’s happening in their country, just out of sight. “It’s not very rosy,” he says.