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Brokers cut jobs to offset losses

Sajjadur Rahman
Financially-strapped stock brokerage houses cut jobs, which the owners blamed on the sharp fall in their revenues last year. Brokers, who expanded their business in 2010 to handle the growing number of clients, faced the setbacks in early 2011 with the stockmarket debacle and tried to adjust income-expenditure throughout the entire year.
“Yes, there were job cuts in 2011. Different houses cut jobs in 2011 to minimise their costs,” said Shakil Rizvi, president of Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) and owner of Shakil Rizvi Securities, a brokerage house.
Shakil Rizvi Securities cut more than a dozen jobs in the just concluded year. But those were the provisional staffs, Rizvi said.
Though there was no exact figure of job cuts, officials of brokerage houses said it would be no less than 500, mostly temporary employees.
Brokers' income comes from the everyday trade at the rate of Tk 0.40-Tk 0.60 for every Tk 100 worth of transactions, both for buy and sale.
According to DSE data, average transactions were more than Tk 1,643 crore per day in 2010 and the brokerage houses and merchant banks got an average commission ofTk 6.57 crore every day.
In 2011, the average per day transactions came down to Tk 664 crore and the commission slipped to Tk 2.65 crore, nearly one-third of the income brokers earned in the previous year.
There are 238 brokerage houses enlisted with the Securities and Exchange Commis-
sion. According to these houses, around 5,000 people are direcdy employed with them. Many of the employees were recruited in 2009 and 2010 to handle the rush of investors — from an industrialist to a footpath shop owner.
“Job cut is the easiest way to minimise costs,” said a senior executive of one of the leading brokerage houses in the country that cut 15 jobs in the just concluded year.
The DSE president said brokers and merchant bankers widened their branches to provide services to the growing number of clients in 2010. Many brokerage houses became overstaffed at that time, Rizvi added.
“The private sector has limited money and they cannot sustain in business for months incurring losses,” he said, reasoning out the job cuts.
If the market sustains, there will be new recruitment, said the DSE president.
"Owners have nothing to do but to cut jobs if there are continued losses,” said Mahbub Alam, manager of Sharp Securities that has also cutl0-12jobsin2011.
But most of the merchant banks tried to retain its employees despite a serious hamper in revenues, said a top official of LankaBangla Securities, a leading merchantbank.
“The problem the market is facing now is temporary and we don't want to cut jobs of skilled people," said the official, asking not to be named.
His merchant bank was engaged more with initial public offerings and advisory services in 2011 than giving margin loans, he added.
sajjad@thedailystar.net