[ by Howard Haykin ] Credit Suisse is said to be planning a new round of layoffs in Europe - reducing European investment banking by as much as 30, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter.  It's unlikely to be the last.  So said Peter Toogood, head of investment at Old Broad Street Research, to CNBC on Tuesday:

“The game’s up. There’s no transactions, M&A isn’t happening, this is what deleveraging looks like. It’s a decade of austerity and that makes people feel more unlucky.”

He added:  “Investment banks are going to struggle. There’s not going to be mass lending going on. The leverage game is over and people can’t accept it. Volumes are declining en masse and their headcounts are too high.”

Trading volumes have declined overall since March 2009, with falls in U.S. stock trading volumes in each month this year. April recording 6.5 billion trades on average per day - that compares with 12.1 billion in 2008, at the market’s height.  Both the NYSE and the Nasdaq market reported lower trading in Q1 of 2012. Less trading has meant less lending, because of worries about bank capitalization and because of reluctance to borrow money on the part of companies.  When acquisitions happen, they are often based on cash rather than leverage, which means that banks have a smaller size of the pie. Last Thursday's mass downgrade of the world’s biggest investment banks by Moody’s showed the increasing level of concern about the sector.  Yet, Thomas Kloet, CEO of Canadian stock exchange group TMX, was relatively upbeat, saying:  “This is cyclical and we’re going through a cycle where that will be there for a little bit, but I’m optimistic about the future.” He added: "We think that liquidity is down mainly because you have a pretty low volatility index right now, presenting less trading opportunities. That’s impacted liquidity.” Massive injections of liquidity from the Federal Reserve , the Bank of England and the European Central Bank have not trickled down to increased lending or acquisitions.  "People still have this hope and expectation that the authorities will fluff and stimulate,” Toogood said.  But he said:  “It’s beginning to dawn on them that that’s where we’ll be – a relatively low level of activity, which doesn’t mean the world ends, it’s just a different shape.” For further details, go to: [CNBC, 6/26/12].