ZURICH/NEW YORK (Reuters) - UBS AG said it is cutting another 2,000 jobs at its troubled investment bank and closing most of its commodities business but will remain a universal bank and will not quit investment banking completely.

The news on Friday comes just a day after the world’s biggest wealth manager said it made a small profit in the third quarter after a year of losses, suggesting it had started to turn the corner even as the credit crisis engulfs other banks.

The 2,000 job losses come on top of 4,100 investment banking positions cut in the past year. Forays by the investment bank into risky assets like U.S. subprime mortgages have forced UBS to write down $42 billion — the most of any bank in Europe.

A spokeswoman said the cuts would mostly fall in the United States and Britain, where they would be carried out "swiftly" and mostly through redundancies, with a target completion date of the year end. Some jobs will also go in Asia and Switzerland.

The cuts mean UBS will have reduced its investment banking workforce by about a quarter to 17,000 since peaking in the third quarter of 2007, while the bank will have cut its total headcount by more than 10 percent to under 80,000.

The latest move comes a week after HSBC announced 1,100 investment banking job cuts and follow tens of thousands of job losses across the global financial industry, which is in its worst crisis since the Great Depression.

Jerker Johansson, chief executive of UBS’s investment bank, told Reuters in an interview that UBS was determined not to sell the business, which he said he was positioning to make a profit in 2009 despite the worsening industry outlook.

UBS’s shares extended gains after the comments and were up 6.6 percent at 22.70 Swiss francs at 9:02 a.m. EDT, when the DJ Stoxx European banking sector index was up 3.4 percent. UBS had already rallied on Thursday’s news of a quarterly profit.

However, the stock is still down two thirds from a year ago, when it reported its first loss in nine years. It tumbled to 15.18 francs on September 16, its lowest level since listing in its current form in 1998, after Lehman Brothers collapsed.

"The revenue base in the investment bank is probably falling just as fast as the cost base given market conditions. We doubt that these cuts will be the last," said Helvea’s Peter Thorne.

 Global bank HSBC Holdings is cutting 1,100 jobs in its investment banking operation, or 4 per cent of the unit’s total, as it weathers the global financial crisis.

"We’re doing it because of market conditions and the economic environment, and our cautious outlook for 2009," Hong Kong-based spokesman Gareth Hewett told Reuters on Friday.

HSBC’s Hong Kong-listed shares rose 0.7 per cent on Friday, outperforming a weaker broader market, while its London-listed shares were down 0.6 per cent by 0840 GMT against a 1.6 per cent fall in the sector.

"Markets continue to be challenging and difficult but our strategy leaves us well positioned for the next wave of global growth, when it comes," Hewett said.

The cuts add to more than 80,000 job losses across the banking landscape in the past 18 months as the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression deepens. It has caused unprecedented change on Wall Street and the demise of venerable firms such as Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers.

The HSBC jobs are in front- and back-office operations. About 500 of the cuts will be in Britain and about 300 more will be elsewhere in Europe and the United States. About 100 are in Hong Kong, where the bank’s large Asian operations are based.

HSBC will be left with about 26,000 staff in its global banking and markets (GBM) division. It employs about 335,000 people across the bank.

HSBC was one of the first banks to feel the sting of the subprime mortgage crisis in the United States and has booked writedowns or losses of $18.7 billion since the start of the global credit crunch last year.

In August, the bank posted a 28 per cent fall in first-half pretax profit to $10.2 billion as it took a $14 billion hit from bad debts on US home loans and asset writedowns.

In its global banking and markets business, pretax profit fell 35 per cent in the first half to $2.1 billion, although that was a 37 per cent increase from the second half of 2007.

"There is no change in strategy at Global Banking and Markets, which is to be a leading emerging markets-led and financing-focused wholesale bank," Hewett said.
   

Getting a job in banking can be a drawn out process as recruitment cycles often take up to 6 months and the top banks may look at hundreds of candidates for a single post and go through 2 or more interviewing stages often in addition to a competency assessment. If you already work in banking or the finance sector you may be familiar with the recruitment process and if you’re looking for a change of career within banking this article will discuss briefly the best approach to successfully finding a new job.

Agency or direct

At the start of your journey to find a perfect banking job you will usually be faced with 2 routes (although you can take both simultaneously). Whether you should use a recruitment agency to source suitable opportunities for you or go direct to financial institutions with your applications.

Using an agency

Agencies are widely used in financial recruitment particularly for skilled banking jobs as the recruitment process is a labour intensive one often comprising of weeks of processing under qualified or inappropriate candidates before arriving at a list of high quality potential employees. The banking sector more than most appreciate the added value of dealing with an agency for some or all of their recruitment rather than managing their own extensive human resources based recruitment programme.

Recruitment agency consultants are driven to match the best candidates to the clients banking jobs, usually more so than the person to whom responsibility falls within the client institution- often the HR department or busy heads of department who may not have the required time to properly process high volumes of applications.

For the candidate, using a recruitment agency can also offer some distinct advantages over applying directly to individual companies in response to banking job vacancy advertisements. An agency will be working closely with the banks with a range of vacancies both current and upcoming available. If an advertised vacancy does not prove to be suitable your recruitment consultant will often be able to recommend an alternative position to apply for.

If you have the skills and experience that an agency is looking for they will actively seek out new opportunities for you as they become available, this can take much of the time consuming work out of applying for a new job in banking as agencies will only put candidates forward for positions they feel they are well suited for and capable of obtaining. Agencies can also deal with the initial contacting of the financial institutions and get interviews arranged on your behalf.

Offers for free stuff abound online and most of them are completely legitimate. Although it might be nice to get a free sample of mocha coffee or a free pair of baby booties, what do you really do with all that free stuff? Why not make some cash with it?

Free samples are so prevailing online that you can virtually can order five or six things every day and be getting free stuff in the mail for months! These free samples are available for everything from coffee creamers to baby wipes and antacids. The idea behind them is to turn you onto the products so that you will start buying them, but you can also turn free stuff into cash in your pocket by reselling it.

Let’s start with some ideas. If you bundle similar items together, you have the perfect "sampler kit" or gift basket. All you need is three or four related items and you are ready to start. For example, you could put together some baby products, a sample of Dove soap, a couple mini packs of baby wipes, a formula sample and maybe even some talc powder or baby perfume. Put those all in a cute basket along with a bow and cellophane and you have the perfect newborn gift basket.

To create a sampler pack, you need items that are even more similar, like coffee. If you can get eight to ten different coffee samples, they can be packaged together in a neat little box, perhaps along with a mug or creamers and sold as a sampler pack. No one will ever know it was created from free stuff!

 If you barcode your outgoing mail, or have it done for you by a presort house, you will be affected by a sweeping U.S. Postal Service initiative. Known as the Intelligent Mail barcode program, it takes effect, in part, May 2009. To fully implement the program, large mailers will have to invest considerable rime and capital to comply with the directive. If they don’t, they will lose their automation (presort) discounts, in part or in total.

Considering that banking represents one of the largest mailer classes, and that individual large banks are .