US investment bank Merrill Lynch today flagged plans to shed jobs in Japan, saying it would offer voluntary redundancy packages to 1,700 workers at its retail brokerage branches.
"This is a part of our restructuring plan for our retail brokerage branches," said Merrill Lynch spokesman Takayuki Inoue, adding details of the program would be made clear next year.
"We are considering all our options, including downsizing, but whether we will merge branches or cut staff, no formal decision has been made," Mr Inoue said.
He added he doubted all of the 1,700 staff offered the packages would retire. The US firm has 30 such branches in Japan with some 3,000 total workers.
Mr Inoue reiterated a denial by Merrill Lynch last month that the firm was pulling out of the retail brokerage business in Japan.
The restructuring follows the retreat of several large foreign brokerage houses from certain areas of stock-dealing in Japan, lashed by drops in the stock market and a shrinking economy.
In November, Societe Generale Group said it was pulling out of the online stock trading business in Japan as of today due to lacklustre demand and poor economic circumstances.
Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and Co. said last month it was making a hasty retreat from Japan's retail brokerage market a mere 10 months after it began the operation in Tokyo.
Merrill Lynch started its retail business in Japan in 1998 when it took over operations from failed brokerage house Yamaichi Securities Co. Ltd.
Yamaichi Securities, once the fourth-ranking of Japan's "Big Four" brokerages, collapsed in November 1997 under a mountain of bad loans and was finally declared bankrupt on June 2, 1999.
At the time it was Japan's biggest business failure since World War II.
AFP