Citigroup to lay off 6,500 staff

Quoting unnamed people familiar with the matter, the report said that the "pink slips are likely to be handed out on Monday."

The latest round of layoffs comes on top of close to 10,000 employees having been shown the door earlier this year, as part of Pandit's aim to cut the company's annual expenses by $15 billion. The company has more than 3,50,000 employees on its payrolls across the world.

In another report, The Times daily in Britain quoted unnamed sources as saying that that even senior managing directors would not be immune from the layoffs. "Citgroup's mergers and acquisitions bankers may bear the brunt of the cost-cutting because their ranks were not sharply reduced earlier this year.

No major department of the investment bank is likely to be spared, apart from certain businesses in emerging markets and its lucrative transactions services division," the Times report said.

In April, Citigroup said that 9,000 jobs would go on top of the 21,000 eliminated in the past year. "Entire trading desks in New York and other cities are expected to be eliminated. And unlike Citigroup's other recent reductions, this round will feature layoffs of dozens of senior managing directors," it quoted the people close to the matter as saying.

The latest round of job cuts is the first major move by John Havens, who took the helm of Citigroup's institutional-clients group, which includes the investment bank, in late March.