Lehman Brothers has given in to the continued downturn in European capital markets by taking the knife to its European investment banking operations for the second time this year.

The firm has laid off around 80 bankers from its team of 400 professionals in Europe as part of a reorganisation which has cut out an entire layer of banking staff and split the investment banking division into two operations. The cutback come on top of 60 redundancies in European investment banking in May.