The banking giant, Citigroup on Monday unveiled its plans to cut about 50,000 jobs, representing 20% of its global workforce, in an effort to cut costs and stem huge losses sparked by bad investment and lending decisions.

The cuts would leave the bank with about 300,000 employees, down from its peak of about 375,000 in the fourth quarter of last year.

In addition, management also plans to reduce expenses by 20% across the company in the coming quarters, largely by selling assets. The lender said that it would trim expenses by 16 percent to 19 percent to about $50 billion in 2009.

The job cuts would be in addition to about 23,000 layoffs announced earlier this year.

The latest layoff plans were discussed by CEO Vikram Pandit on Monday at the company's town hall meeting in New York with employees before publically announced.

Citigroup's layoffs are the latest in what's been a brutal round of job cuts across the financial industry. Last month, fellow blue chip financial major American Express Co. announced major layoffs, unveiling plans to slash 7,000 jobs.

Other major firms across other sectors including Hewlett Packard Co., Goldman Sachs Group, Whirlpool Corporation and Yahoo! Inc. have announced their plan to layoff
5% to 10% of staff.

Software giant Sun Microsystems has recently joined the layoffs list.

The New York-based bank has posted four straight quarterly losses, including a loss of $2.8 billion during the third quarter.

The shares of Citigroup had fallen over 70 percent this year, leaving the bank with a market value of only $ 51.9 billion, barely twice the $25 billion of investment it received from the U. S. Treasury Department's bank bailout plan.

Shares of Citigroup traded down 4% to $9.14 ahead of the Wall Street opening.