Goldman Sachs (GS 1.30%) is pushing ahead with a fresh round of job cuts after just launching a round of layoffs in September, Bloomberg reported .
One of the world's leading investment banks, Goldman had planned to conduct layoffs earlier this year but ended up putting those plans on hold once the coronavirus pandemic hit.
In September, Goldman resumed those plans, launching a round of cuts that would ultimately trim the bank's work force by 400 employees. This new round of cuts isn't expected to surpass that number, according to Bloomberg, although there could be even more job cuts to come next year.
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The goal is to reduce the bank's efficiency ratio, a measure of a bank's expenses expressed as a percentage of total revenue (lower is better), which is a closely watched metric by bank investors.
Goldman had an efficiency ratio of roughly 68% in 2019, which is high compared to most of the industry. It's goal in January was to realize $1.3 billion in annual expense savings over a three-year time line .
Although it's been a wonky year for expenses, at the end of the third quarter of 2020, Goldman had an efficiency ratio of 70.3% for the first nine months of 2020, which is higher than the first nine months of 2019. Not all was bad, however. The bank had a 57.5% efficiency ratio for the third quarter alone.
Still, the bank would like to see a higher stock price, especially after the incredible year it has had due to its investment banking operations. After the recent rally in the banking sector, Goldman is trading around $226 per share, which is above tangible book value but still below book (or net asset) value .
