Highly skilled immigrants also brace up for employment shockers.
Wealthsimple, a popular platform for retail investors and online traders is the latest company to lay off staff, due to the current market volatility fuelled by inflation, interest rate hikes and traders’ panic. Wealthsimple is laying off 13% of its workforce as the financial services company joins Netflix and many other global technology businesses facing “market volatility.”
In a letter sent to staff of the Toronto-based business on Wednesday, chief executive Michael Katchen said 159 of the 1,262 people who work for Wealthsimple will depart the company through the move.
In a letter sent to staff of the Toronto-based business on Wednesday, chief executive Michael Katchen said 159 of the 1,262 people who work for Wealthsimple will depart the company through the move.
He positioned the cuts as part of the fallout from months of seeing the market soar and Wealthsimple grow at an “unprecedented” rate amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The company’s valuation hit $5 billion, and it raised $750 million from a star-studded list of investors including rapper Drake and actors Ryan Reynolds and Michael J. Fox as money poured into the tech sector during the health crisis. The changing conditions mean the company will now focus more heavily on core businesses, like investing and banking, and products that will power financial innovation.
The CEO explained that “many of our clients are living through a period of market uncertainty they’ve never experienced before.”
Wealthsimple is not alone in the market frenzy
Wealthsimple is not the only retail financial institution facing the heat. Netflix also recently announced laying off around 150 employees across the company.
“Our slowing revenue growth means we are also having to slow our cost growth as a company. So sadly, we are letting around 150 employees go today, mostly US-based. These changes are primarily driven by business needs rather than individual performance, which makes them especially tough as none of us want to say goodbye to such great colleagues”, a representative from the company told CNBC.
The market turmoil has hit the crypto firms particularly hard as well, and they have been among the quickest to cut jobs. In addition to the moves by Gemini and Coinbase, the largest publicly traded U.S crypto exchange, Argentina-based crypto exchange Buenbit recently laid off 45% of its staff, top Latin American crypto exchange Bitso cut 80 employees out of its workforce of 700+ workers and the holding company for leading Brazilian exchange Mercado Bitcoin laid off over 80 employees.
As the market frenzy shows no sign of slowing down anytime soon, investors and immigrant entrepreneurs have to belt up for some more storm before the calm.
