Australian trading company Akuna Capital slashes 11 per cent of workforce

As painful staff cuts continue to dominate this year, recent hires have been hit with the bad news that they no longer have a job.

An Australian trading firm has slashed 11 per cent of its workforce, including recent hires. Picture: Getty Images

An Australian trading firm – that paid starting salaries of up to $200,000 – has slashed 11 per cent of its workforce, including recently hired graduates.

Akuna Capital has cut 64 positions at the firm out of its total 580 person global workforce, which includes operations in the US and UK, The Australian revealed.

Sources told the publication almost half of the cuts – adding up to as many as 30 of the 64 staff who lost their jobs – were based in Australia, while a number of new hires faced the terrible circumstance of having their contracts rescinded.

Akuna had been one of the companies in Australia that offered some of the highest tech graduate salaries in the country, employing software engineer graduates on salaries of $200,000 before bonuses.

Other tech companies – including the likes of Amazon, Google, Atlassian and Canva – were paying between $147,000 and $350,000 for graduates, with some salaries including stock options and end-of-year bonuses.

Akuna intern Shawn Lee revealed in a LinkedIn post that it was a “complete shock” to have his job offer pulled just weeks before he was due to start at the company.

“It is with a deep sense of disappointment that I must announce that my return offer as a junior developer at Akuna … has been (sic) rescinded due to upcoming organisational changes at the company,” he wrote.

Staff were told the redundancies were made to cut costs, while Akuna’s chief operating officer

Johnny Norris said the impact on staff members was “deeply regrettable”.

Akuna Capital cuts included recent hires. Picture: Instagram

The company had recorded a $US1.4 million ($A2.05 million) profit from its Australian business in 2021, up from $US1.2 million ($A1.73 million) the year before, documents lodged with the Australian Securities Investment Commission revealed.

However, in 2019 it lost $US5.4 million ($A7.8 million) on its cryptocurrency assets and tech start-ups. Akuna had recently invested in e-bike company Zoomo which along with cryptocurrency lender Blockfi were also slashing jobs.

Australian e-bike company Zoomo was an outfit Akuna had invested in, which also cut staff numbers. Picture: Supplied

A raft of tech companies were firing staff last year and the pain has continued in 2023.

Goldman Sachs was set to sack 3200 staff in the coming weeks in one of its biggest round of job cuts in its more than 150-year history.

A number of other corporate giants have also embarked on aggressive cost-cutting measures, with global tech giant Amazon set to of lay off more than 18,000 of its workers, representing about 6 per cent of the retailer’s overall corporate workforce of 300,000 people.

Microsoft on Wednesday said it would lay off 10,000 employees in the coming months as the economic downturn continues to punish US tech giants.

Meanwhile, US bank Silvergate was forced to lay off hundreds of staff and sell off assets after it saw $US8 billion ($A11.6 billion) worth of cryptocurrency withdrawn by customers.

US software company Salesforce also planned to cut 10 per cent of staff, or more than 7000 employees, citing a challenging macro environment.