Tuesday, March 31, 2009

AllianceBernstein Fires Over 230

The axes is swinging at AllianceBernstein, which likely hasn't seen a profitable quarter in years. The company announced it had canned a total of 237 people, lowering headcount to 4,760 at March 31, from 4,997 in December, and another 75 are expected to be sacked any minute. Among the 237 were 31 investment professionals which include analysts, PMs, CIOs, directors of research and traders. Presumably these are the 31 that watch Cramer for investment advice and start every conference call Q&A with the words "Great quarter..."

The lucky 4,760 who are still left at AB should not get too comfy - after all they work at a company that is not allowed to short securities in the biggest bear market in 70 years. Sphere: Related Content
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14 comments:

Thomas said...

Phil Krause adding value yet again.

Anonymous said...

It's Peter Kraus, not Phil.

Anonymous said...

Tyler, I applaud your effort to sensationalize and make a joke out of a sad and unfortunate round of layoffs at an investment management firm...but you should really have someone proof your work before you post it. "The axes is swinging" destroys any credibility that I was willing to give you before reading the rest of your uninformed post which was only about 20% accurate. Clearly this "blog" is for amateurs who don't know what they are talking about, as evidenced by your friend Thomas who can't even get the name of the CEO right, despite the fact that it's splashed across the front page of every major newspaper once a week. Guess you're not the only one who needs to do your homework.

Tyler Durden said...

i wish i could afford proofreaders or the time to double check what i post: alas things here move at a faster pace than most of corporate and asset management america. maybe i can hire one of the recently departed analysts at AB

as for the fact, please refer to the reuters article below. lastly have no clue who thomas is.

http://www.reuters.com/article/etfNews/idUSN3144295820090331

Anonymous said...

The only things that check out between the article and your blog are the numbers.

"Among the 237 were 31 investment professionals which include analysts, PMs, CIOs, directors of research and traders." - that is simply FALSE.

"after all they work at a company that is not allowed to short securities in the biggest bear market in 70 years" - also, FALSE. Get to know the firm, they've been shorting for more than 10 yrs.

Tyler Durden said...

if you disagree with the reuters data, please bring it up with them. if you disagree with the sarcasm and hyperbole of the blog (which has never claimed to be as stoic and stern as the WSJ), then i apologize. end of the day, maybe AB should have simply shorted more.

Anonymous said...

At the end of the day you should spend more time thinking about what we can do to make our clients money back instead of jumping on the mainstream bandwagon that we all should have known that lehman was going down.

spdb said...

I don't think s/he was concerned so much with the data as s/he was concerned with your distortion of such data. Point me to the part of the Reuters article where it says CIOs and Directors of Research were let go.

Unknown said...

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/alliancebernstein-announces-first-quarter-2009-staff-reductions,769430.shtml

spdb said...

Again, another distortion. I understand this is a blog, but you should strive to improve your reading comprehension, so that in your posts you don't end up distorting reliably reported stuff.

Unknown said...

did you read the PR at all? point me to where i have distorted the reliably reported stuff.

spdb said...

TyTy,
Your initial post said that "Among the 237 were 31 investment professionals which include analysts, PMs, CIOs, directors of research and traders," which implied that among those let go were CIOs, DORs and traders.

When confronted by anonymous about the misrepresentation in your post, you supplied a link to the Reuters and told her/him to take it up with them. But the Reuters article contained no such reporting. You acknowledged your error after I confronted you by supplying a link not to the article you originally referred Anonymous to, but rather to the AB press release, which you hadn't previously referenced.

The AB press release included two salient facts - (1) a description of what constitutes the group of "Investment Professionals" and (2) that the overall headcount of that group declined year over year, which does not break out the layoffs by positions or indicate that layoffs hit every position level of that group.

You spliced together the article and the release and in the process misrepresented what happened.

Unknown said...

thanks for pointing out that the ET article (AB PR) confirms what i referenced. but i appreciate the extensive editorializing.

Cornelius said...

Sean, I see your point but keep in mind that the point of this blog isn't to report the news, it's to provide critical, unbiased analysis. If Tyler or I conflate data that we have seen/heard/discussed elsewhere from multiple sources on a relevant topic, it's unlikely that we are going to take the time to provide links to every single source.

At the end of the day, we only want to pass on good information and would never knowingly mislead. The bibliography is unlikely to meet any academic standards though.