Fidelity adds 1,700 to job cuts
Mutual fund manager boosts total workforce reduction to 3,000 by end of March.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Mutual fund manager Fidelity Investments said Friday that it will cut 1,700 more jobs in the first three months of 2009 in the latest round of cost cutting.
The announcement comes a week after the Boston-based company announced 1,300 job cuts plus an unspecified number of additional reductions.
With the announcement, the workforce will be reduced by 3,000, or 7% of its 44,400 employees, by the end of March 2009, according to a Fidelity spokeswoman.
The job cuts are part of a number of measures taken by the company to cut costs, according to Fidelity.
The Fidelity job cuts are the latest in a long string of layoffs and hiring freezes. As the U.S. economy has slowed, more companies are looking for ways to streamline their operations and keep costs low.
In addition to its more than 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.
The latest cuts are in addition to reductions totaling about 800 jobs in two rounds earlier this year after Fidelity reorganized some business units. While Fidelity is more diversified than many of its rival money managers, it still relies heavily on money management fees for much of its profit.
Those fees are based on the assets held in Fidelity's more than 400 mutual funds, and assets there have been shrinking.
Earlier Friday, technology company Sun Microsystems (JAVA, Fortune 500) said it would be cutting 6,000 jobs, or about 18% of its workforce. Another report from The Wall Street Journal indicated that banking giant Citigroup (C, Fortune 500) was preparing to layoff 10,000.
-- The Associate Press contributed to this report 
