AllianceBernstein layoffs include institutional sales and marketing personnel

AllianceBernstein (AB) plans to lay off 54 employees across two of its offices in New York City and White Plains, N.Y., according to a public notice the firm filed with the New York State Department of Labor.

Included in the layoffs are institutional sales and marketing personnel, an AB spokeswoman confirmed.

The reason cited was AB's pending relocation of its corporate headquarters to Nashville, Tenn., the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification published Feb. 1 on the department's website showed.

The firm announced in May that it was moving its headquarters to downtown Nashville from New York, and that it expects to complete all phases of the move by 2024.

Among the layoffs, 36 employees at the firm's Manhattan office will be affected, while 18 employees at the firm's White Plains office will be impacted, the WARN notice said.

The layoffs will take place throughout May, June, July and December, as well as in June and July 2020, according to the notice.

In October, the $550 billion money manager separately reported to the New York State Department of Labor that it would be laying off 35 of 244 employees in its White Plains office throughout 2019, also citing the move to Nashville, another public notice showed.

On Thursday, the spokeswoman said in an email that the Labor Department notice from this month was "related to ongoing changes in location of resources tied to the firm's move to Nashville," and that most of the employees notified of the layoffs were in the firm's information technology, operations and client group department, the latter of which includes individuals in sales and marketing roles working with institutional and retail clients.

The firm expects that it will have to file WARN notices on a rolling basis, as employees decide whether they will relocate to Nashville, the spokeswoman said.

AB will be relocating about 1,050 jobs to Nashville over the next few years, where the firm's executive team, finance, IT, operations, legal, compliance, internal audit, human capital, and sales and marketing organizations will eventually be housed, the spokeswoman said.

"Our N.Y.-based investment professionals are not impacted by the move," the spokeswoman added. "We will continue to maintain a principal location in New York City (once the Nashville move is complete, NYC will be our second largest office globally). Our existing New York-based investment teams (equities, fixed income, multiasset and alternatives) will remain in NYC. "