After three years of frenetic expansion at its Smithfield location, Fidelity Investments is in something of a holding pattern.
The Boston-based mutual fund giant has poured more than $100 million into its 330-acre campus off Route 7. After opening a second office building late last year, the company now employs about 1,600 workers.
The two buildings total more than half a million square feet of office space with the capacity to support about 2,500 employees, according to John D. Muggeridge, vice president of communications and general manager of Fidelity’s Smithfield operation. But for the time being, the company has no concrete plans to substantially add to its workforce in Smithfield.
“We have not been doing a lot of staffing,” Muggeridge said, although the company recently advertised for a few retail-broker openings in Smithfield.
In July, Fidelity laid off about 70 workers in its institutional services group in Smithfield. The financial services industry as a whole has been hit with widespread layoffs in the face of a stagnant economy.
“Clearly, nobody expected what’s gone on in the financial-services industry, and if things were better Fidelity probably would be hiring more people,” Muggeridge said.
A potential threat to Fidelity’s further expansion has been magnified with Dow Chemical’s recent proposal to expand its manufacturing operations adjacent to Fidelity’s campus. Fidelity officials repeatedly have said that Dow’s plans could thwart the mutual-fund firm’s expansion plans in Smithfield.
“If their plans for manufacturing go through, it certainly could impact our plans,” Muggeridge said.
For now, Fidelity’s master plan for the site remains unchanged. Eventually, the company foresees adding three more buildings that would boost its headcount in Smithfield to about 5,000.
A timeline for the expansion, however, has not been set, Muggeridge said.
“It’s hard to tell how and when expansion will occur,” he said. “Fidelity has about 33,000 employees and 17 million customers nationally, so if a need arises, Smithfield could be considered for expansion of any number of different Fidelity entities.”
Under Fidelity’s original deal brokered with the state, the firm receives financial incentives for each employee it adds up to about 2,400, Muggeridge said. While it is unclear when the firm will reach that threshold, he said that Fidelity already has far exceeded original projections for both capital investment and the number of workers employed in Smithfield.
Most of those workers – about 65 percent – are Rhode Islanders. And of those, about 25 percent are graduates of Rhode Island colleges and universities. Muggeridge said Fidelity has started programs at Johnson & Wales and Community College of Rhode Island to entice students to get brokers licenses while working part-time in Smithfield.
“We’ve had a lot of success recruiting in Rhode Island,” he said.
