BOSTON - Fidelity Investments said Thursday it will cut nearly 1,300 jobs this month, with more layoffs to come early next year, in response to declining markets that have eroded mutual fund assets along with the fees Fidelity earns from its core business.
Layoff notices will go out to about 2.9 percent of Fidelity's overall workforce of 44,400. The cuts will be spread across the company's far-flung U.S. operations, affecting management positions as well as lower-level jobs, said Anne Crowley, a spokeswoman for Boston-based, privately held Fidelity.
No fund managers or analysts are being laid off, she said.
More cuts next year
A second round of layoffs is planned in the first three months of next year, with the number of those cuts and other details to be released in coming weeks.
Crowley declined to offer specifics, but said both rounds of cuts will cumulatively affect fewer than 4,000 jobs -- a figure that had circulated recently in media accounts.
In a letter distributed to employees Thursday, Fidelity President Rodger Lawson said recent market volatility has hurt company revenue and "has led me to conclude that many of the cost improvement plans which would have been phased in by our business units over the next three years need to be accelerated."
In addition to 11,000-employee Massachusetts operations in Boston and Marlborough, Fidelity has sizable offices in Florida, Kentucky, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Texas and Utah.
