Ray Dalio's Bridgewater Associates reportedly lays off dozens of employees

• Bridgewater Associates, the world's largest hedge fund, laid off dozens of employees across the firm this month, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.
• The job cuts spanned Bridgewater's research team, client services, recruiters, audit groups, and the core management team, according to the report.
• Bridgewater told the Journal that "team members will be working more from home so we won't need the same number of support people, new technologies are changing what type of people we need and how we serve our clients, and we also want to become more efficient."
• Most Bridgewater employees have been working remotely due to the coronavirus pandemic, according to the WSJ.
• Read more on Business Insider.

Ray Dalio's Bridgewater Associates has laid off several dozen employees across the firm this month, the Wall Street Journal's Juliet Chung reported Friday.

The layoffs include some Bridgewater veterans with more than 15 years at the firm, and span the group's research team, client services, and recruiters. There were also job cuts to the hedge fund's audit groups, which assess employee performance, and the core management team, a management training program founded by Dalio, according to the report.

Bridgewater told the Journal in a statement that "team members will be working more from home so we won't need the same number of support people, new technologies are changing what type of people we need and how we serve our clients, and we also want to become more efficient."

The statement continued: "While this will produce more than normal attrition in terms of people leaving the firm this year it won't be greatly more than normal and we will continue to invest and hire in key areas."

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Bridgewater employees have been working remotely due to the coronavirus pandemic, according to the report. The layoffs occurred in Zoom meetings. Outgoing employees will receive 18 months of healthcare, extra months of severance, a prorated annual bonus, and outplacement help, the Journal reported.

The layoffs come during a rough period for the firm, which in March saw the worst monthly performance ever in its flagship Pure Alpha fund as the coronavirus pandemic roiled global markets. Through June, Pure Alpha was down nearly 14%, erasing the last five years of returns, according to the Journal.

The firm's assets under management have also shrunk to $140 billion at the end of June from $168 billion at the end of 2019, the Journal reported.

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