Singapore’s largest bank, DBS reported its decline in quarterly profits and likelihood to shed off 900 employees. The plan of giving pink slips will reduce the headcount number by 6 percent and will be inturn the first ever and the largest layoff among Asian banks.

DBS is famous for its fastest expansion in the region had to resort to this action as its profits continued to deplete due to the global financial crisis.

Richard Stanley the DBS chief executive said, "We must run a tighter ship. This is a painful decision for DBS and for me personally but it's something we have to do in a difficult environment."

The bank entails corporate, consumer and wholesale banking activities to clients based in Asia and the Middle East stretching across 16 markets and is a shareholder to Temasek, the Singaporean state investment agency which owns a 28 per cent stake in the bank.

The net income of DBS saw a downfall of 38 per cent to S$379m (US$253m) in the three months till September 30 marking the sharpest decline among Singapore's three main banks.

Job cuts together with collapse in initial public offerings and mergers and acquisitions activity are a common scenario these days as the financial institutions manage to survive.

Goldman Sachs’s Hong Kong office plans to cut up to 100 jobs in accordance to its announcement to lay off tenth of its global workforce and other Asian banks are also expected to follow suit.

While some other major institutions are resorting for pay cuts instead of reduction in company’s headcount. “We are holding off from firings at the moment but that might change by the year end, but we might opt to cut bonuses instead of letting go of good bankers, who are costly to recruit when the good times return,” one of the Hong Kong-based investment banking executive was quoted as saying. CLSA, the Asian focused brokerage, have decided upon a voluntary pay cut of up to 25 per cent for the next year of 500 of its top employees. The other major banks such as Overseas Chinese Banking Corporation (OCB) and United Overseas Bank (UOB) have also posted their downfall in third quarter profits.