Australian investment bank Macquarie Group Ltd. is now under pressure to slash down its workforce to cope with the lower trading and merger fees.

Reports claimed Australia's largest investment bank had been consolidating its management and people as the expected global economic recovery is at a snail-pace and earnings were not suffice.

"They went out and hired a lot of people in preparation for the recovery, and the recovery hasn't been what they thought. This year and next year are hard years for them," said an investment manager at Wilson Asset Management in Sydney and cited in a Bloomberg report.

Macquarie earlier said markets are still weak and is expecting a low performance following this trend. The Bank will report on its earnings on Oct. 29.

Paula Hannaford, Macquarie's spokeswoman based in Sydney, has declined to give a comment on these issues. The Financial Times yesterday said Macquarie will cut 60 jobs at its infrastructure investing unit.

Other fund managers

Macquarie Bank is not the only one languishing with the rather slow recovery of the global economy. The other fund managers and investment firms are so far rendering their worst performance in the 38-member S&P/ASX 200 index. Credit Suisse Group AG and Goldman Sachs fell 21 percent and 6.3 percent, respectively.

According to a Wall Street Journal report today, hedge fund firm Man Group PLC is also planning to cut down the number of its staff and consultants by almost 200.

Citing sources, WSJ said this is part of their deeper-than expected workforce cuts following its acquisition of GLG Partners this month.