Ethics in the digital workplace
Digitisation and automation technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), can affect working conditions in a variety of ways and their use in the workplace raises a host of new ethical concerns.
French investment bank Natixis has announced that it is to cut 840 jobs, or 15% of its workforce in 2009, in what it called a ‘radical’ transformation aimed at reducing risk and losses. The job losses will mainly affect the corporate investment banking division.
The bank is also halting most of its capital-markets activities in Asia and equity-derivatives trading in the US, running down and then removing from its balance sheet 19 billion euros of risky assets. Natixis will also close small offices in South America and abandon plans to expand into India and South Korea.
Natixis said the cuts would put it in a position to adapt to the new economic environment resulting from the subprime crisis and the collapse of Lehman Brothers and would help it achieve its 2009 goal of reducing sources of losses as soon as possible.
Natixis has been battered by multiple headwinds in 2008, notably its exposure to toxic assets, which forced it into a 3.7 billion euro rights issue. Last month, the bank posted a third-quarter net loss of 234 million euros, compared with a net profit of 437 million euros a year earlier.
French savings banks Banque Federale des Banques Populaires and Caisse Nationale des Caisses d'Epargne together own around 70% of Natixis and have repeatedly denied reports that they would delist the investment bank.
Eurofound (2008), Natixis, Internal restructuring in World, factsheet number 67598, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/67598.