Marsh & McLennan, the insurance brokerage group, plans to slash 3,000 jobs in the wake of a lawsuit filed last month by Mr Eliot Spitzer, New York state attorney general.
The announcement yesterday came as Marsh & McLennan announced that its profits tumbled 94 per cent in the third quarter.
The staff cuts, three-quarters of which will come at its insurance brokerage Marsh, underscore the impact that Mr Spitzer's investigation into bid-rigging and corruption in the insurance sector could have on other brokers and insurers.
Marsh, the first company to face charges from Mr Spitzer, employs about 38,000 people worldwide. About 40 per cent of the redundancies at Marsh will take place outside the US.
A spokesman for the company could give no indication last night on whether the 400 people at Marsh Ireland could be at risk and no timeline for a decision.
A spokeswoman for Mercer HR Ireland, another Marsh & McLennan operation, said there would be no job losses among its 500 Irish staff.
Yesterday, Marsh & McLennan blamed its poor performance on the softening insurance market, the cost of legal settlements with Mr Spitzer and its decision to scrap incentive commissions.
