Finance
UBS latest bank to announce NJ job cuts as finance sector shrinks
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May Day Rally in Newark for NJ unemployment expansion: Video
Labor activists and unions gathered for a May Day Rally at Military Park in Newark on May 1, 2024, calling for a NJ unemployment benefits expansion.
Swiss bank UBS is laying off 51 employees at its Weehawken office, public records show, as New Jersey’s banking and finance sectors more broadly grapple with tightening budgets amid uncertain economic times.
UBS is reportedly looking to trim its costs by $13 billion, which includes cutting one in every 12 employees, according to Reuters. A spokesperson for UBS declined to comment for this story.
Data from state filings showed that five financial institutions announced New Jersey layoffs so far in 2024: The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation, TD Bank, Prudential Financial, Citibank and JPMorgan Chase Bank.
Some of those banks — including Citibank and Charles Schwab — are cutting their head counts by the thousands or tens of thousands across their entire operations.
Nationwide, Charles Schwab is cutting 2,000 employees and Citibank 20,000 of its staff.
“Banks are reducing back-office costs, and this includes people and head count reductions, unfortunately,” said Christopher Marinac, director of research at Janney Montgomery Scott, a financial services firm. “Overall, bank earnings are stable and generally not growing. Further, bank balance sheets are not expanding much this year.”
One factor — the Federal Reserve, which has raised interest rates 11 times since the COVID-19 pandemic. That pushed mortgage rates higher for homebuyers, meaning fewer people obtained mortgages, prompting Wall Street to respond with layoffs, said a report by CNBC.
That resulted in the state’s first job losses in half a year, unemployment figures show.
“Banks are being careful on new lending and trying to retain more capital as the Federal Reserve is tightening standards and raising capital requirements soon,” Marinac said.
James Hughes, an economist at Rutgers University, told NorthJersey.com that white-collar jobs in banking and finance have become saturated after a two-year hiring spree that followed the COVID-19 pandemic.
Layoffs this year
New Jersey companies are letting go of more than 4,600 employees in 2024, public records show.
The layoffs include 2,774 job cuts announced in 2023 for this year, and another 1,847 cuts announced in the first three months of 2024.
Those cuts come at a time when New Jersey’s workforce posted a net loss in jobs for the first time in six months. Meanwhile, the state unemployment rate has hovered at 4.8% since September, state data shows.
Daniel Munoz covers business, consumer affairs, labor and the economy for NorthJersey.com and The Record.
Email: munozd@northjersey.com; Twitter:@danielmunoz100 and Facebook
BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) – Initial public offerings, better known as IPOs, may seem like big investment opportunities, but a financial adviser is warning they could be a risky addition to your portfolio.
Dan Cunningham of the investment management company One Day in July, said he recommends that people stay away when a company starts selling initial shares on the stock market.
Most recently, Elon Musk’s SpaceX became the biggest IPO ever, but Cunningham said people shouldn’t get caught up in the hoopla.
“They generate a lot of excitement, but when you look at long term results, IPOs have not been a good investment. So we really try to encourage people to stay away from the hype. You are really betting on the future and taking an enormous amount of risk by buying IPO shares in many cases,” Cunningham said.
According to Cunningham, the good news is that, over the long term, the market and most retirement funds that mirror it will balance out.
Copyright 2026 WCAX. All rights reserved.
DULUTH — The Duluth Homegrown Music Festival is seeking both new operational leadership and a solution to financial filing issues that caused the organization to lose its federal tax-exempt status, which it has not held since 2022.
The organization is currently operating as a taxable nonprofit, confirmed Don Ness, the former Duluth mayor who serves as president of Homegrown’s
board of directors.
Ness and the board are working to discern whether there might be any outstanding tax liabilities in the wake of an apparent filing lapse.
“It’s a serious matter that requires diligence to do things right, and to correct past oversight, and to make sure that we are in full compliance with all tax and regulatory requirements,” Ness said. “The board is 100% committed to that course of action.”
As the Duluth Monitor first reported, Homegrown had its federal tax-exempt status revoked in 2022 after failing to make required financial reports for three years. The Monitor also reported that Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s office has notified the organization it may be in violation of state law requiring the proper registration of soliciting charities.
Clint Austin / Duluth Media Group file photo
“All but one of us have been on for less than a year,” Ness said of the current board members. “We’ve been committed to saying, ‘hey, we need to improve the points of accountability.’”
The organization will also require new operational leadership. Co-directors Cory Jezierski and Dereck Murphy-Williams resigned earlier this month, after leading Homegrown through four successful festivals.
“My contract ended at the end of May, and I knew a few days later that I did not want to continue in that position,” Jezierski said. “Simply put, it was the best thing for my mental health. It’s a job that requires many, many hours and a lot of work, and it can be very stressful as well.”
Amy Arntson / Duluth Media Group file photo
Murphy-Williams did not respond to an interview request for this article, nor did preceding Homegrown director Melissa LaTour. According to LaTour’s
LinkedIn profile,
she was Homegrown director from 2016 to 2022.
Jason Beckman, a recent president who is no longer serving on the board, responded to a News Tribune email but did not provide an interview availability before this article went to press.
Ness does not believe the reporting lapses were due to any ill intent. He praised Jezierski and Murphy-Williams for their success managing festival operations. “They cared deeply about the festival,” he said. “It’s amazing to see that our community continues to support this really unique and special festival.”
“Those guys run a hell of a festival,” said Scott Lunt, festival founder and a current board member. “I think they needed help with bookkeeping.”
Clint Austin / Duluth Media Group file photo
By Jezierski’s account, issues with the festival’s tax status became apparent shortly after he became co-director. “We went to file taxes, they were rejected,” Jezierski said. “At that time we, of course, didn’t know why right away, but once we started pulling on that thread, we unraveled a whole lot of the problems that were going on.”
Jezierski said “it took a long time to try to get any sort of help” from the board, but said that by the time he and Murphy-Williams left the organization, “everything had been turned over to be reconciled” with a financial professional.
Ness, like Lunt, was deeply involved with Homegrown in its first decade but had not had an official role with the festival since then. After launching the festival in 1999 and running it on his own for several years, Lunt was “burnt out,” Ness remembered.
Derek Montgomery / Duluth Media Group file photo
After a transition period during which the festival was run in partnership with the Ripsaw newspaper, Homegrown established a nonprofit organization in 2006 with Ness as festival director. Ness subsequently stepped down when he was elected mayor in 2007.
By 2025, Ness was in his current position as executive director of the Ordean Foundation.
“I was approached by a couple of longtime music scenesters,” Ness recalled. “They said, ‘There are questions about (Homegrown’s) nonprofit status. There are questions about some governance issues. We’re concerned.’”
Ness agreed to join the board, and became president. The 2026 festival ran smoothly from an operational standpoint, but Ness found the financial reporting to be lacking.
Clint Austin / Duluth Media Group file photo
“The last board meeting that we had prior to the (co-directors’) resignations was intended to be an overview of the festival that was a month before,” Ness said. “I certainly felt very uncomfortable with how little financial information we were receiving.”
Lunt also joined the board in 2025, marking his first time serving in that capacity. He said the new board has been spending significant time addressing the accounting and reporting issues.
“Every year at Homegrown time I’m like, ‘I should get more involved,’ and then I don’t,” Lunt said. “Then this board thing came up, and it was kind of sold to me as, like, four meetings a year. I was like, ‘Oh, that’s perfect.’ And now we’re meeting weekly.”
Clint Austin / Duluth Media Group file photo
Although it’s unclear how the organization’s finances will look when the accounting and reporting issues have been fully addressed, along with any outstanding tax liabilities, both Ness and Lunt said they are confident the annual festival will continue without interruption.
“The organization will continue,” Ness said. “The festival will continue. Homegrown is in no danger in terms of its viability.” The financial documentation Ness initially received indicated budgeted revenues of about $140,000, against about $130,000 in expenses.
“Financially, I think we’re in a great spot. We have the money to hire the (financial) professionals, and we have (done so),” Lunt said. “We were hoping that we could get all this sorted out before it had to become more public.”
“We poured countless hours into this festival, and this is how it ends, with everyone talking about this,” Jezierski said. “It’s rough.”
“There’s a DIY ethos that is really at the core of Homegrown,” reflected Ness. “We’re throwing a music festival that isn’t waiting for some famous band from the East Coast to bless us with their presence. We are doing this on our own.”
Clint Austin / Duluth Media Group file photo
That DIY spirit also means “you’re kind of passing wisdom down from person to person, and sometimes that’s imperfect.” Ness continued. “The ways that we do things evolve over time, because it’s not a buttoned-down corporate sort of thing. That can create its own set of challenges.”
“It’s self-supporting,” said Lunt about the festival. “It’s widely volunteer-run. You do need to pay a couple people, obviously, to keep track of some things, but it’s going to be strong into the future. It’s gone through its bumps before.”
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