242 employees work at Scandinavian firm Nordea Asset Management in the grand duchy. How many local workers will be impacted by the layoff plan the company has put in place across its branches in Denmark, Sweden and Luxembourg, has not been revealed, but the cut will impact 4-5% of the company’s total workforce of 900 employees, news site Investment Officer.
The asset management firm cited the current macroeconomic context and uncertainty surrounding inflation, geopolitical tensions and interest rates as reasons for its decision. Nordea holds one-third of its AuM in the grand duchy (€117bn), according to IO, and grew its workforce from 190 to 242 in the grand duchy between the end of 2018 and the start of 2022. In 2018, the firm to Swiss bank UBS’s local branch. At the end of 2022, Nordea had launched a global social bond fund, to extend its range of ESG solutions tackling social and societal challenges.
Simplifying the operating model
On the same day, investments and savings group M&G--which employed over 63 people in the country--announced it is planning to cut staff in a voluntary redundancy scheme. The aim, they said, is to save £200m over the coming two years. In their presented on 9 March, the company said it plans to “simplify the operating model and unlock growth through a new transformation programme and by the end of 2025.”
“The simpler an organisation is, the closer it is to its clients, the better experience and service they will receive,” the company said in a statement. “To enable this, we have launched a transformation programme targeting £200 million of cost savings gross of inflation by the end of 2025. By 2025, we also aim to reduce our Asset Manager cost/income ratio to below 70%, but this is not the destination: our longer-term ambition is a cost/income ratio in the range of 66% to 68%.” A spokesperson told Delano on 14 March that it was too early to comment on the situation “because we are a people business, we will first be talking with our employees about the plan.”
The firm’s AuM and administration at the end of 2022 fell from £370bn to £342bn over a year, reported Financial News London. M&G plans on relying more on automation and digital technology, it said. According to Financial News London, the group’s redundancy scheme is still in the early stages.
Delano reached out to M&G and Nordea Asset Management for comments but did not receive an answer by the time of publication. This article was amended on 14 March at 14:29 to add a comment by M&G and to fix a mistake on the number of employees it has in Luxembourg.