In April chief operating officer Gary Cohn said;

“We are very happy with our results in Brazil. We are more bullish on Brazil than many people out there. We have a multi-year plan top build our Brazil business.”

Today they have announced that they will be halting their Brazilian expansion due to the economic outlook. They will be losing four members of the Brazil executive committee and have already lost five MD’s and will be cutting 25% of investment bank staff. They had doubled the workforce over the past two years to 300.

Spokesman Michael Duvally said that;

The outlook for the economy, equity and M&A deal volumes are worse than expected

They are not the only bank to reduce operations as Barclays have also been cutting staff levels. UBS sacked 65 people from their operation

Brazil’s IBovespa index has lost 13% since April and 20% so far this year amid a slow down in the economy.