Citigroup to Slash 10,000 Jobs: Report (Update)

Updated from 2:09 a.m. EST

Citigroup(C Quote) is embarking on another huge round of layoffs and is raising interest rates on millions of credit-card customers, according to a published report.

The moves come as CEO Vikram Pandit tries to stabilize the financial giant, which has reported net losses of more than $20 billion over the past year, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Starting this week, Citigroup is handing out pink slips to at least 10,000 employees in its investment bank and other divisions throughout the world, the Journal reports, citing people familiar with the matter. Pandit and his deputies have instructed officials to slash their budgets for employee compensation by at least 25%.

The Journal reports spokeswoman Christina Pretto said Citigroup continues to work toward its goal of becoming more efficient, including by shrinking its work force. "We will continue to carefully manage our headcount levels as we re-engineer the company in line with our stated goal and market realities," she said.

The goal is to shrink Citigroup's work force to about 290,000 employees by next year, the Journal reports.

Separately, top Citigroup executives bought a total of 1.2 million shares of the company's stock late Thursday. Pandit purchased 750,000 shares, the newspaper reports, according to a person familiar with the matter. Some executives and shareholders have been hoping the CEO would buy a chunk of stock as a show of faith in the company.

Meanwhile, Citigroup, one of the nation's largest issuers of credit cards, is notifying some credit-card customers that their interest rates are being raised by an average of three percentage points. A person familiar with the strategy estimated that the rate increases would apply to less than 20% of Citigroup's card portfolio, according to the Journal.