Morgan Stanley, Atria job cut details emerge

More details have emerged about where the job cuts at Morgan Stanley and Atria Wealth Solutions, recently acquired by LPL Financial Holdings.

Financial advisors are almost never laid off as part of cost cutting or consolidation efforts at retail securities firms because they generate revenue and drive growth. But back office workers and support staff are particularly vulnerable when big broker-dealers lay off staff because they represent a fixed cost that can be cut, potentially boosting profitability.

Morgan Stanley in March was considering cutting close to 2,000 employees, according to news reports, the bank’s first major workforce reduction under CEO Ted Pick.

New York will lose its share of jobs at the wirehouse. According to filings with New York State Department of Labor, Morgan Stanley later this month intends to cut 230 jobs in various offices across Manhattan, with the biggest blow coming to its 750 Seventh Avenue location.

It’s not clear where the rest of the Morgan Stanley job cuts will occur. At the end of last year, Morgan Stanley reported 80,000 employees globally.

InvestmentNews reported last month that Atria Wealth Solutions, which was bought last year by LPL, was laying off 55 employees in Houston, where its broker-dealer, Next Financial Group, is based.

Atria is also making 31 job cuts in Syracuse, N.Y., the home of its broker-dealer Cadaret Grant & Co, according to New York State records known as WARN notices. In California, Atria is cutting 82 jobs in San Diego as of July, according to state records.

A spokesperson for Morgan Stanley declined to comment.

LPL’s purchase of Atria, with 2,400 financial advisors and an asking price of $805 million, was built on eventually integrating the firm into LPL and benefiting from savings. Meanwhile, LPL’s ongoing acquisition of Commonwealth Financial Network and its close to 3,000 financial advisors is designed to keep the firm as a separate entity inside of LPL. Those differences have an impact on staffing.

A spokesperson for LPL on Monday pointed to the firm’s earlier statement about layoffs in Texas: Atria was not regarded as a stand alone business and that LPL has offered some of the laid off Atria employees new or different positions at the company.

Large financial institutions are particularly sensitive to rising costs because they eat into profits. The last time an industrywide pullback in staffing and hiring occurred was in the fall of 2023, well before President Donald Trump’s tariff wars.

At that time, rising costs of acquisitions, higher salaries for employees, and competitive recruiting bonuses for financial advisors, along with the record spike in interest rates, were making it more costly to run large wealth management enterprises.

With the broad stock market essentially flat over the first five months of the year, along with uncertainty caused by President Trump’s global trade and tariff battles, some large financial advice firms appear ready to cut staff and potentially reduce costs.