The redundancy axe took a fresh swing last week when Barclays announced 1,800 job cuts in its corporate and investment bank in spite of soaring fourth-quarter revenues. It was just the latest to sever heads.

Flow monster Deutsche Bank said in July that it would cut 1,500 jobs from its investment bank; in October, Swiss giant UBS said it would give approximately 2,000 front-office investment bankers the heave-ho. While these are among the biggest, redundancies are happening across the board.