Alexander & Alexander Services Inc. has laid off 39 people at its Owings Mills administrative headquarters, as part of the insurance brokerage's worldwide restructuring program.
The New York-based company last week let go 34 employees in various corporate-level divisions, such as treasury, legal and the comptroller's office. Also, five people at Owings Mills who work for Benefacts, a unit of the company's Lyndhurst, N.J.-based Alexander Consulting Group, were laid off, said spokesman Gary Sullivan.
The layoffs were "part of the 'Funding the Future' process that we've undertaken to steady the company and set the stage for what we hope is renewed growth for '95," Mr. Sullivan said.
The move, which was made in the middle of last week, follows the announcement in October of a $12 million charge the company planned to take in the fourth quarter to pay for up to 400 job cuts in its U.S. operations.
The Owings Mills operations were unaffected by those cuts. But five of the 290 workers in Alexander's Baltimore sales office lost their jobs.
This month's layoffs leave 362 employees in administrative jobs and 128 in Benefacts at the Owings Mills offices, Mr. Sullivan said. He said the latest cuts affected everyone from clerical workers to the manager of an administrative function, which he declined to name.
A handful of people in various locations around the country have been laid off since October, according to Mr. Sullivan.
The work force reduction, which continues in Alexander's offices in the United States and around the world, follows years of substandard performance and losses at the nation's second-largest insurance broker.
Many of the company's problems stemmed from underwriting pTC and liability problems from acquisitions made in the 1980s. Almost 4,000 jobs have been eliminated since 1987, a reduction of more than 20 percent.
The company lost a total of $100 million in 1991 and 1992, largely due to $225 million in restructuring charges. It turned a $27 million profit last year, but losses returned in the first three quarters of this year.
This summer, Alexander secured a $200 million investment from insurer American International Group Inc., moved to stem further liability losses in its British unit and hired a new chairman, Frank G. Zarb, former chairman of securities firm Smith Barney.
And last month the company announced it will record a $20 million pre-tax gain in the fourth quarter from the sale of its personal insurance business to a subsidiary of the Chubb Corp.