BlackRock, the giant money manager, is letting go 500 employees, or about 3% of its workforce.
The move underscores the challenges facing the asset management business as the long bull market finally ended last year. BlackRock and other firms have seen their share prices slide amid slowing investor inflows and rivals like Fidelity cutting fees on certain index funds to zero.
"Market uncertainty is growing, investor preferences are evolving, and the ecosystem in which we operate is becoming increasingly complex," BlackRock said in a memo Thursday reported by The Wall Street Journal. The firm indicated in the memo that it will soon make additional changes to "simplify and enhance our organization."
BlackRock reported in October that investors took more money out of its funds than they put it for the first time in three years. The firm's share price has lost a third of its value since reaching a high last January.
BlackRock manages more than $6 trillion in client money and offers both actively managed and passively managed mutual funds and ETFs. The idea is to capture money in any market, but over the past year stock and bond prices have gotten a lot more volatile and more investors have decided the sidelines are really where they want to be.
