WARWICK – MetLife Inc. chairman, president and CEO C. Robert Henrikson is holding “town hall-style” meetings with the insurer’s Rhode Island employees today and tomorrow to explain its restructuring and recent losses, but the company says there will be no immediate layoff announcements, Providence Business News has confirmed.
“He’s not coming to deliver some big bad news,” MetLife spokesman Christopher Breslin said. “This is an opportunity to talk about the company and where our business is headed.”
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Employees also will get the chance to ask Henrikson questions, Breslin said. The meetings will be held at the Crowne Plaza Hotel Providence-Warwick.
MetLife, the nation’s largest life insurer by policies, employed between 1,800 and 1,900 people in Rhode Island as of May, a spokesman told Providence Business News at the time.
The company, which posted a second consecutive quarterly loss in the three-month period ended June 30, merged the Warwick-based auto and homeowner’s insurance division with its corporate and individual businesses to create a single U.S. division on Aug. 1.
MetLife has not publicly offered details on how the restructuring will impact the company’s payroll. “This just happened Aug. 1,” Breslin said. “There’s a lot of work under way.”
The timing of the meetings so soon after the merger is coincidental, Breslin said, adding that Henrikson has held similar gatherings elsewhere in the Northeast in recent weeks.
To accommodate a large number of employees, MetLife has scheduled numerous sessions at the hotel today and tomorrow. Breslin said. The meetings are not open to the public, and the company declined to allow a reporter to attend.
Additional information is available at MetLife.com.
