Layoffs Underway at UK's Ambassador Theatre Group

New chief executive of the UK's Ambassador Theatre Group Mark Cornell has revealed to The Stage that the company will be rolling out "compulsory redundancies" following a recent period of voluntary exits.

"We are not looking to make a lot of people redundant, that is not the aim," Cornell said. "We are simply looking to make ourselves more efficient, to generate some funds to invest in some really exciting areas of the business."

He added: "The compulsory redundancies will be nothing like what we needed to do from the outset, as the voluntary redundancies took care of a lot of that. But now we can be much more specific and indeed there are some departments that simply will be unaffected. To be frank, the vast majority of people will be unaffected."

The goal of the layoffs is to allow ATG to reduce costs for producers, get rid of "heavy, slow and bureaucratic management," and encourage local decision-making.

Following ATG's recent acquisition of Broadway's Hudson Theatre last year, the company is also hoping to expand more internationally.

"Like any business, we have a budget and we have had some great successes this year, but we have had one or two things not working as well as we had hoped," Cornell explained to The Stage. "As a result of that, we are somewhat adrift of our budget. It's not dramatic."