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The number of students sitting examinations that allow them to work in the City has collapsed and could be running at a third of its earlier levels. Figures seen by The Times show that registrations to sit the exams administered by the Securities & Investment Institute (SII) this year are running at just short of 42,000, a fall of 17 per cent from their levels the previous year. The SII is given the task by the Financial Services Authority of setting and administering the exams that most City professionals, including wealth managers, stockbrokers and investment bankers, must pass before they gain their FSA accreditation. The figures are a clear leading indicator of employment intentions in the City. Typically, a broker or an investment bank would take on a graduate or other recruit and, as part of their internal training programme, expect them to spend several weeks on the exams. The SII's own figures suggest that registrations in 2009-10 could fall to little more than 35,000, down 30 per cent on last year. But the institute is carving out a useful sideline helping to train financial services professionals from overseas financial centres, particularly in the Middle East. In 2009-10 international sittings are expected to account for a third of its workload. This means that the fall-off from the City alone is disproportionately larger than the total figure. Simon Culhane, the chief executive of the SII, said: “I would suspect you would be very lucky to see 50 per cent this year as opposed to last year, and more likely a third.” He said the figures, which showed the number of sittings rising last year even as it became obvious that the City was heading for job losses, indicated that institutions had attempted to hold their nerve and continued hiring as before in the hope that the downturn would be of limited duration. “Employers really did hold on to honour their commitments,” he said. But this confidence had since collapsed as the depth of the downturn in financial services became apparent. “That stores up problems two years down the road,” he said. “When the recovery comes, and let's hope it does come, if you haven't the core skilled people in an international hub like London then you are in trouble.” The fear is that, as in previous downturns, employers have panicked and reduced hirings to below what is needed to cope with any upturn, leaving them short of trained staff. Figures on City job cuts are hard to come by because they are done piecemeal by individual banks. This month Merrill Lynch and its new owner, Bank of America, said they would be cutting about 1,900 people in London, one of the biggest single reductions in the City's history. That would represent about 30 per cent of the combined London workforce of the two banks. In all, 2,500 people lost their jobs when Lehman Brothers collapsed last autumn. The Royal Bank of Scotland, now 70 per cent owned by the Treasury, unveiled plans to slash about 4,500 jobs in the UK. The cuts came on top of 2,700 already announced this year. According to the Centre for Economic and Business Research, about 28,000 City jobs went last year and the consultancy is forecasting another 34,000 this year, which would leave the number employed in wholesale financial services at about 290,000. Mr Culhane said the figures showed that the proportion of holders of “back-office” jobs — processing orders, administration and reconciliation — sitting SII exams was