St James’s Place to axe 500 jobs

A Gloucestershire-headquartered wealth management firm is to axe around 500 jobs as it looks to save around £200m.

The London-listed, Cirencester-headquartered St James’s Place is lining up plans to cut about one-sixth of its 3,200 corporate staff.

St James’s Place, earlier this year, said it would make £100m in cost cuts per year for the next two years, and that it expected to have made £500m in savings by 2030.

The cuts will not affect the company’s network of around 4,800 financial advisers across the country, who operate their own smaller firms under the St James’s Place brand.

A spokesperson for St James’s Place said: “At our half-year results in July, we committed to saving £100m per year from the addressable cost base by 2027.

“Our cost reduction plans are focused on simplification and standardisation of processes within the business, but a programme of this size and scale will inevitably impact colleagues.

“We have now begun consulting with colleagues to share our proposal for how this might impact roles, the outcome of which will not be known until next year.

“In the meantime, we are fully committed to supporting all potentially impacted colleagues and to keeping them fully updated on key decisions and developments.”