Morgan Stanley is cutting dozens of jobs across sales and trading right before year-end bonuses

• Morgan Stanley is cutting dozens of sales and trading staff as part of a year-end review, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
• The bank will tell affected employees this week.

Morgan Stanley is the process of dismissing dozens of sales and trading staff.

The cuts are being made to cull the firm's underperformers or reposition desks that may need fewer staff, according to people with knowledge of the matter. It's part of an annual process that the bank has made more rigorous in the past few years, one of the people said.

The bank began alerting affected employees over the past week as part of its annual promotion and compensation process, one of the people said. Next week, remaining employees will be told of their bonus figures and, if they were up for a promotion, whether or not they got it.

Some staff may also not get a bonus for 2018, what's known in the industry as a doughnut or a bagel.

A Morgan Stanley spokesman declined to comment on the layoffs.

Morgan Stanley made headlines in 2015 when it announced a surprise 25% cut to its fixed-income business, a move that ultimately affected almost 500 people. This year's cuts are much smaller and aren't part of a similar top-down cut, but a bottoms-up evaluation of individual business units and headcount, one of the people said.

The cuts, which span the fixed-income, equities and research division, affect less than 100 people. The unit has more than 3500 people globally.