10% is perhaps the maximum gearing a bank should ever be allowed to use, and not the 35,000% that has just fallen out of fashion :)

You look at the history of these big financial companies and they were all founded on good business practice, just thrown out the window in the last decade of boom (was it boom for all?) bust (definitely bust for all).

Banks should be encouraging good investment, they should be taking a chunk of a business at real worth, with option to buy back, fully explained. It is quite simple, it just requires integrity and honesty. Which of course was thrown out quite some time back. Bankers should be on a set salary, with clear guidelines as to their internal progression, you don't want hotshots in banks, you want them in business, were you can see if they are really hot or not.

At times I think it would be worth exploring setting a maximum size for business, sure there are economies of scale, but a lot of them are just downright dishonest and more akin to bullying with numbers and threats rather than achieving higher productivity due to specialisation or investment.

Regulation definitely favours the big players, often used to squeeze the middle and small end of business, it rarely affects huge corporations and when it does it generally causes more problems then it solves.

Businesses have got too big, we need devolution in the business world. The focus should not be on survival or destruction of the competition but on the standard of living of a society, sure there should be rewards for those who get good results, but those results should not always be gained at the detriment of others.

It all starts with each person though, and if we all made efforts to support the smaller players, become smaller players, and ignore the big boys it would all work out very well, business and life should be more symbiotic rather than parasitic, and that is something only each individual can work on.

It'll be the wankers that cost them so much money, right?

Thanks for telling me what 10% of 32569 is - not at all sure I could have worked it out for myself. Cheers.

PS And you rounded it for me too! You treat us just *too* much.

...you could have punned that headline? "Goldman Sachs 10% of workforce" would have done nicely. Yeah it doesn't adhere to the "accepted" rules of grammar, but when has that stopped you before?

...as apparently they get rid of the lowest-performing 5% of their staff around this time every year.

Paris because, well, she likes a good sacking.

'The financial firm today said it plans to cut 10 per cent of its 32,569 employees worldwide.

That should mean layoffs for about 3,260 workers.'

Thank you for that clarification. Percentages can be tricky, especially the old 10% favourite. Moving that decimal point one place to the left can be a nightmare and El reg have done brilliantly here.*

Well quiiiiite well, it's wrong of course, but close.