Wachovia, the US financial services firm, has started cutting its equities staff a year after expanding the group and moving it to New York.

One person familiar with the cuts estimated it to be between 10% and 20% of the firm's equities staff in New York. Wachovia has 600 employees in its New York office, including staff from its other businesses such as fixed-income. The bulk of the cuts are coming from the equities salesforce. Some employees believe the equities division is being reduced in favour of the fixed-income business, which turned in stronger performance this year. Earlier this year, Wachovia opened an equities trading floor in the Seagram Building in New York to house its team, many of whom moved from Baltimore to Manhattan in the firm's restructuring. It has poured substantial money into its equities division, including hiring Quinten Stevens, JP Morgan's former co-head of US equity capital markets, in 2005. Wachovia declined to comment.