Mumbai-based financial services company, Edelweiss, has issued pink slips to about 30 employees as a part of the company's cost cutting measures and business rationalisation.
Although company officials said the employees were not part of any specific department, sources familar with the developments indicated that the layoffs were mostly from Edelweiss's private client brokerage group (PCG) and its institutional equities team.
Edelweiss said the employees will be compensated as per their contracts.
"Being a diversified financial services company, we find it prudent to evaluate our current businesses and new initiatives on an ongoing basis. This helps us to easily calibrate resources, remain operationally efficient and strategically leverage ourselves to swiftly respond and adapt to emerging challenges and opportunities," said the company in reponse to a mail regarding the layoff.
Edelweiss recorded a significant drop in its fee and commission income, which included revenues from broking, investment banking, asset management, and other fees.
The company, whose fee and commission income declined by around 26.7 per cent at Rs 67.76 crore during the second quarter this year as compared to Rs 92.54 crore for the same period last year, on Wednesday said, "To ensure peak operational efficiency, there has been some retraining and redeployment of staff from other lines of businesses where surplus capacity may have developed."
While announcing the second quarter results, the company had said that its fee income has been impacted by the slowdown in capital market activity and more specifically in the primary issues.
In a recent investor presentation, the company mentioned that the key focus for the second half of the financial year would be to control costs and manage risks.
"The employees were asked to leave due to non-performance. There have been no mass layoffs. Edelweiss currently has approximately 1800 employees ," said an official at Edelweiss, adding that in the current scenario the company is in the process of investing in both infrastructure and people, as it proceeds with its retail initiatives and asset management business. In a recent conference call, the company said that its profit after tax during the July-September quarter dropped 23 per cent to Rs.43.6 crore over the same quarter last year.
