After T. Rowe Price revealed a 5.5 percent layoff earlier this week, fundsters may not be surprised to hear that the Baltimore-based firm has put two expansions on hold, too. The St. Petersburg Times' Jodie Tillman reports that the timeline for T. Rowe's planned new offices in Land O'Lakes, Florida is now up in the air, and the Baltimore Sun's Hanah Cho reports that T. Rowe has delayed its expansion plans in Owing Mills, Maryland.

Earlier this week when releasing first quarter earnings (which fell 68.1 percent), T. Rowe execs confirmed that the asset manager will cut 288 jobs, while also lowering advertising spending in 2009 by an expected 25 percent (see MFWire, 4/22/2009 and 4/22/2009.

According to the Times, T. Rowe had planned to move 435 jobs from Tampa (where its lease expires in 2012) to three not-yet-constructed buildings in Land O'Lakes, two of which the firm had aimed to break ground on by October of this year (and eventually adding 1,200 more jobs to the new facilities over 10 years). Yet 28 of the 288 firm-wide cuts this week came from Tampa. And in Owing Mills, T. Rowe had planned to put 1,400 new employees into two not-yet-completed buildings.

"The need to be able to close on a piece of property so we can immediately start construction ... is obviously not as big of an issue as it was when we started the process," T. Rowe spokesman Brian Lewbart told the Times, pointing to the troubled economy. "It makes it harder for us to commit to a timetable." 

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