Prudential Financial Fires 27 People

Prudential Financial Inc. fired 4% of the people in its institutional trading and sales group to cut costs, the company said Wednesday.

Twenty-seven people were fired from the company’s institutional equity research, trading and sales group, Prudential spokesman Jim Gorman said. About 600 people remain, including 53 analysts, he said.

Prudential, a life insurance company based in Newark, N.J., sold its retail brokerage business to Wachovia Corp. last July but kept its institutional equity business.