LONDON — Most world stock markets fell Monday after Citigroup Inc. said it would cut another 53,000 jobs around the world to deal with the fallout from the financial crisis. Asian shares were steady earlier.
Investors also nervously await to see whether the troubled U.S. automakers would get a bailout. Senate Democrats want to use part of the $700 billion Wall Street bailout to help prop up Detroit’s Big Three carmakers: General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC.
The latest bout of jitters was stoked by the announcement from Citigroup, which had already cut about 23,000 jobs this year. The banking giant, which lost around $20 billion last year, saw its share price 6.6 drop percent on the news.
Analysts said Citigroup’s job-cutting would likely be followed by many more leading companies as they grapple with the sharp global economic slowdown, and as a result it remains very difficult to call a bottom in stock markets. Japan became the latest country to enter an official recession, government figures showed Monday.
“We continue to question any confident assertion that stocks have encapsulated the global economic cycle-bottom ... at a time of diminishing faith in traditional preventative medicine,” said Neil Mellor, an analyst at Bank of New York Mellon.
The principal focus of attention for markets as the week kicked off was the meeting of the G-20 world leaders in Washington. They provided a symbolic show of unity between rich and emerging nations, but few concrete reform measures were announced.
Detailed plans for reform of the International Monetary Fund and other organizations will be discussed at a follow-up meeting scheduled for the spring in London, and pledges on cooperation over the use of government spending or tax cuts were loosely worded in the summit’s communique.
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