UK – Glasgow-based Britannic Asset Management is to lose 12.5% of its staff in a bid to cut costs. Cuts will be across the board, with estimates of 40 redundancies in total.

“Although we are a profitable company and have a good record for managing costs, we are not immune to slowing stock markets, and the outlook is much the same for next year,” explained a spokeswoman at Britannic.

The company will be making cuts through a voluntary redundancy programme. It has already made Terry Ewing, its US equities investment director, redundant. The US equity unit will be amalgamated within an international equity team, to be headed up by Andrea McNee, who was previously investment director for Asia Pacific equities. Responsibilities for US equities has been handed over to Alison Wright.

Britannic employs 320 people, of which 50 make up the investment management team. As of December 2001, Britannic had 9.42 billion dollars in European pension fund assets under management, and 25.5 billion dollars in total assets under management.