French banks cutting US staff

PARIS, Jan 2 (AFP): French banking giants BNP Paribas, Societe Generale and Credit Agricole are currently slashing about 1,000 jobs in the United States largely due to difficulties in raising dollars, a report said Monday.
Diony Lebot, chief executive of SocGen Americas, told French daily Les Echos the layoffs were dictated by the tightening of banking credit requirements and "the reduction of our financing in non-securitised dollars".
A French banker based in the United States told Les Echos that the layoffs had been "particularly brutal" in the past few weeks.
The US branch of Societe Generale has already reduced 20 per cent of its 2,000-strong staff in New York, the newspaper said.