Nov. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Credit Suisse Group AG, Switzerland's second-biggest bank, plans to eliminate more jobs at the securities unit and is considering a sale or a joint venture for part of its asset management division as financial markets worsen, three people familiar with the matter said.

The staff reductions, which may occur before year-end, follow 500 firings announced two weeks ago, said the people, who declined to be identified because the matter is private. The extent of the additional cuts in areas including proprietary trading is still under consideration, they said. The division had 21,300 employees at the end of September.

``No. 1 on the list is obviously the investment bank,'' said Dirk Hoffmann-Becking, a London-based analyst with Sanford Bernstein & Co. He expects Credit Suisse to shrink ``cyclically challenged businesses'' such as equities, advisory and underwriting.

At the fund unit, the bank is seeking to revive profit after pretax losses of 359 million francs ($302 million) over the first nine months of the year. A joint venture or sale of the Global Investors unit, which includes fixed-income, equity and money market funds with 255 billion francs of assets under management, is being considered, the people said.

Andres Luther, a spokesman at Credit Suisse, declined to comment. The Financial Times reported that the bank may reorganize the asset management unit earlier.

Morgan Stanley, UBS

Credit Suisse already announced 2,065 job cuts over the past year at the investment bank, which amassed 6.4 billion francs in pretax losses through September. Banks and brokerages worldwide have reported more than 150,000 job cuts and $711 billion of markdowns and credit losses since the global financial crisis began last year, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

Morgan Stanley said this week it plans to shed 10 percent of its institutional securities staff and 9 percent of the firm's asset-management group as the economy contracts and client demand wanes. UBS AG, the largest Swiss bank, said in October it will cut 2,000 jobs as it aims to bring the number of investment- banking employees to 17,000 by the end of the year.

Credit Suisse, whose writedowns related to the credit crisis have been a fraction of competitors such as Citigroup Inc. and UBS, said last month that 1.7 billion francs of trading losses contributed to a third-quarter loss. The bank added a net 800 people at the securities unit in the quarter, boosting information technology and other ``support'' functions, Paul Calello, the head of the division, said.

Asset Management

The bank has reduced staff in areas such as leveraged finance and mortgage-backed securities, while hiring in commodities, prime services and equity derivatives. It cut economic risk capital allocated to the securities unit by about 20 percent this year as of the end of September, Chief Executive Officer Brady Dougan said.

The asset management division, led by Rob Shafir since April, reported client withdrawals of 86.3 billion francs over the past five quarters. Outflows in the first nine months at the Global Investors unit amounted to 44 billion francs. The private bank, by contrast, is attracting more new assets than a year ago as Credit Suisse stepped up hiring of advisers for wealthy clients.

``I'd expect that they'd do quite a significant amount of cost cutting in asset management,'' Hoffmann-Becking said. ``In wealth management they're still having net new money inflows and gaining market share, but I'd scale down growth expectations.''

To contact the reporters on this story: Elena Logutenkova in Zurich at elogutenkova@bloomberg.netElisa Martinuzzi in Milan at emartinuzzi@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: November 14, 2008 14:29 EST