Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is embarking on one of its biggest rounds of job cuts ever as it locks in on a plan to start cutting about 3,200 positions this week, with the bank’s leadership going deeper than rivals to shed jobs. The firm is expected to start the process mid-week and the total number of people affected will not exceed 3,200, one of the sources said, but the final number is yet to be determined. More than a third of those will likely be from within its core trading and banking units, indicating the broad nature of the cuts. The firm is also poised to unveil financials tied to a new unit that houses its credit card and installment-lending business, which will record more than $2 billion in pretax losses, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing private information.  

According to Bloomberg, a spokesperson for the New York-based company declined to comment. The cuts in its investment bank are elevated by the inclusion of the non front-office roles that were added to divisional headcount in last few years. The bank still has plans to continue hiring, including inducting the regular analyst class later this year.

Under Chief Executive Officer David Solomon, headcount has jumped 34% since the end of 2018, climbing to more than 49,000 as of September 30, according to the latest available data. The scale of firings this year is also affected by the firm’s decision to mostly set aside its annual cut of underperformers during the pandemic.

Slowdowns in various business lines, an expensive consumer-banking foray, and an uncertain outlook for markets and the economy are pressuring the bank to batten down costs. Merger activity and fees from raising money for companies have taken a hit across Wall Street, and a drop in asset prices has eliminated another source of big gains for Goldman from just a year ago. Those broader industry trends have been compounded by the bank’s mistakes in its retail-banking foray where losses increased at a much faster rate than forecast through the year.

That’s left the bank with a 46% decrease in profits, on approximately $48 billion of revenue, according to analyst estimates. Still, that revenue mark has been buoyed by its trading division that will post another jump this year, helping the firmwide figure notch its second-best performance on record.