WASHINGTON — A $25 billion collapsed buyout offer and higher borrowing costs have prompted Sallie Mae, the nation’s largest student lender, to lay off about 3 percent of its workforce nationwide.
The embattled SLM Corp. said Friday it will slash 350 jobs from an 11,000-worker staff to help cut costs 20 percent by 2010.
“The tightening credit markets have made our costs higher,” company spokesman Tom Joyce said.
The company lost $344 million in its latest reported quarterly results and said additional layoffs are likely.
Sallie recently lowered its 2008 profit forecast more than 13 percent, blaming a credit-market crunch that has driven up costs for borrowing the billions of dollars needed to finance student loans it makes. The company also held a special sale of stock to raise $2.9 billion in cash.
That pressure and the impact of a landmark student-loan law that took effect in October, cutting billions of dollars in federal subsidies for student lenders, “have forced us to take the unpleasant step of laying off staff,” Joyce said.
The planned layoffs will affect workers at the company’s customer-service call centers in Fishers, Ind.; Wilkes-Barre, Pa.; and Killeen, Texas; as well as 14 of 697 employees at Sallie Mae’s headquarters in Reston, Va.
