Top executives spent much of this past week pointing to "green shoots" in dealmaking or trading despite logging another disappointing quarter for those businesses.
At a Morgan Stanley conference, Citigroup Inc's (NYSE: C) CEO Mark Mason said that recent job cuts at the firm would cost up to $400 million this quarter compared to the first three months of the year. The cuts primarily affected the investment banking and trading divisions, resulting in severance costs for approximately 1,600 employees in the second quarter. Mason mentioned that the firm had already set aside severance funds for around 5,000 employees affected by the job cuts this year. Despite