The biggest U.S. investment bank - Citigroup Inc., is getting ready for a considerable reduction of its staff - around 10%.

Since the beginning of the year the bank, which has around 300 000 employees, has announced the cutting of 13 000 jobs.

Actions to reduce the costs of the U.S. financial institution are imposed as a result of its negative results. For the last two quarters the bank experienced losses of around 15 billion dollars.

It joined the negative results published by other financial institutions such as JPMorgan Chase & Co., Merrill Lynch & Co. and Bear Stearns Cos., which had cut a total of around 80 000 jobs.

U.S. financial institutions were mainly affected by the crisis which had spread to mortgage markets and had led to the disposal of assets for more than 400 billion dollars.

Market experts remain skeptical in their expectations for future performance of banks, whose losses are expected to continue growing and even to reach the amount of 1 trillion dollars in the coming years.

Similar actions are likely to be taken by other leading institutions to reduce their costs, which in turn could become the reason that thousands of financial professionals remain without work.

Reducing the staff by 10% is planned also by the largest investment broker - Goldman Sachs Group Inc., in its investment banking unit according to data of Financial Times.

In the second quarter of the year, Citigroup is expected to resort to new disposal of assets worth 8.7 billion dollars.