Bahrain Employment and Career News
Bahrain-based Arcapita slashes jobs by 15 percent
Arcapita, the Islamic investment house is slashing jobs to keep a tab on costs, following prolonged economic downturn, revealed a company spokesman.
The Bahrain-based Arcapita has cut headcount by 15 percent during recent months across its offices in London, Atlanta, Manama, and Singapore, the spokesman revealed.
The group had staff strength of 339 during September 2009.
The downsizing at banks, are a sensitive issue in Bahrain and usually require the consent of central bank and the government.
Bahraini investment houses denied taking such a measure, although the balance sheets indicate that few have halved the staff costs.
Arcapita is struggling with a rapidly deteriorating balance sheet due to fall in placement fee and plummeting asset values, resulting from downfall in property prices.
Arcapita met with loss of about $159mn during second quarter of its fiscal 2010, ended 31st December. Its Bahraini competitor, Gulf Finance House, also recently revealed that it made lay-offs to cut costs.
Just as is the case with several asset managers in the region, Arcapita too depended on the upfront fees on transactions, on behalf of asset management clients during the peak real estate boom in the region, which ended in late 2008. But, with the deterioration of regional economy, the transactions dried up, and the revenues tumbled. The total income of Arcapita fell to $13mn from almost $102mn a year.
Posted on 2/3/2010
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