The multinational asset manager that just bought Pioneer is freezing hiring and planning job cuts. Yet it's unclear how many cuts will come on this side of the pond.

Amundi CEO Yves Perrier has frozen hiring now that the Pioneer deal has closed, Chris Newlands of the British Financial News reports. The acquisition closed last week, and in the U.S. Amundi combined Amundi Smith Breeden with the Pioneer Investment Management USA arm to form Amundi Pioneer Asset Management [profile], led by Pioneer US chief Lisa Jones.

Back in February, news broke that Perrier plans to cut about 450 jobs worldwide post-merger, which translates to nine percent of the 5,000 combined jobs in Amundi and Pioneer. Now Perrier has laid out the rough timetable for those cuts, at least at a high level.

"The idea is to implement front office reductions by the end of this year," Perrier said, Financial News reports. "Cuts to support functions — such as the back office, the middle office and IT — will come in 2018."

"Everything is on track," Perrier said.

Yet perhaps old Pioneer and Amundi Smith Breeden employees here in the U.S. have less to worry about from the integration, given that Pioneer in the U.S. is a big mutual fund business while Smith Breeden is an institutional manager.

Financial News promises to reveal more this coming Monday, when they publish a full interview with Perrier. 

Edited by: Neil Anderson, Managing Editor


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