All the banks are at it. Cutting people and costs is the priority du jour.

Morgan Stanley, relatively unscathed by the credit ructions, is no exception.

Dealbook points to a story this week that the US bank will cut about 5 per cent of its global workforce this year, mostly in the US. Excluding the lucky advisers at its wealth management division who are exempt, that suggests about 5,000 jobs are to go.

But reducing headcount is only one part of the prudence agenda. You have to try to get the staff you do keep to cost less also. Hence Deutsche Bank’s recent missive related “minor infringements” of expenses policy - including the use of company funds for adult entertainment. And the Bank of America soap saga.

Now word reaches Alphaville HQ that banks are toying with that most treasured of perks, the corporately-funded taxi. Morgan Stanley London has just this week, we’re told, changed the time from which employees can call a car to take them home from 9pm to 10pm. The bank’s chosen car firm has also been told only to wait 15 minutes before driving away, to reduce the numbers of meters ticking slowly higher in vacant cabs.

The banks always clamp down on taxi use when times are hard. But we’re intrigued by how much these measures save relative to the effect on employees’ collective will to live? Pathetic perhaps, but being able to roll out of the office into a taxi after a 13 or 14 hour day is an important comfort blanket in the life of a junior banker. In reality, you’re probably stuck well past midnight or gleefully skipping out in disbelief at an hour within spitting distance of when others finish work, but just the idea of a warm taxi to take you home as you plough through a 90-hour week is soothing.

The banks seem to make the same changes (Deutsche Bank’s porn crackdown aside) in every downturn, which suggests that in aggregate, the cutting of taxis, sugar-free hot chocolate and hand soap must add up to something real, rather being a purely symbolic nod to financial abstinence.

Given that taxi policy enforcement, anecdotally, ranges from patchy in the junior ranks, to zero in the upper echelons, it’s hard to see how slight changes can make a substantive difference. The largest consumers of corporate taxis surely must be those handsomely remunerated VPs and MD, strangers to public transport since they got the promotion phone call.

http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2008/05/07/12842/cutting-back-hits-banks-taxis/