Insurance broker Marsh Inc. is to shed 900 more jobs from its global workforce, the company announced yesterday.

The announcement came after Marsh's parent company Marsh & McLennan Cos. (MMC) announced yesterday that second-quarter profits fell 63 percent.

Christopher Reeves, head of the company's local insurance broker unit, said yesterday: "I do not anticipate that any of those reductions will come from Bowering Marsh (Bermuda) Ltd."

MMC is headed by Bermudian Brian Duperreault, who came out of retirement in January to try to boost the fortunes of the global broker.

Mr. Duperreault, the former chief executive officer of Ace Ltd., eliminated 360 jobs at Marsh Inc. in the second quarter after cutting 150 in the first. The company shed 600 jobs in July through outsourcing in the UK.

An additional 900 positions will be eliminated, with the majority coming in the third quarter, Daniel Glaser, the unit's CEO, said. Marsh Inc. employs about 26,000 people, according to the company's website.

MMC rose in New York trading after second-quarter profit beat analysts' estimates on higher revenue and the company announced more job cuts.

The company has the best-performing stock in the 24-company KBW Insurance Index this year, rose 2.5 percent to $30.07 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading.

Earnings excluding a $115 million write-down and other costs were 41 cents a share, six cents better than the average estimate of 13 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.

Mr. Duperreault is cutting jobs as declining insurance rates in the US squeeze the commissions made for matching buyers and sellers.

MMC announced plans in May to sell parts of the Kroll Inc. security services unit and said the firm may seek acquisitions abroad to boost the brokerage. "It was a very strong quarter," Meyer Shields, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus & Co. in Baltimore, said in an interview. "More prudent expense management" may boost profit margins.

The brokerage margin, a measure of profitability which includes results from Marsh and reinsurance specialist Guy Carpenter, was 14.6 percent in the first quarter, beating Shields's estimate of 9.6 percent. Morgan Stanley analyst William Wilt said in a note to investors that margins beat his expectations by 240 basis points.

Net income declined to $65 million, or 13 cents a share, from $177 million, or 31 cents, in the year-earlier period, MMC said yesterday in a statement. Profit was hurt by the $115 million charge to lower the value of the division that provides corporate security and consulting. That followed a $425 million write-down at Kroll in the first quarter.

"This was the second part of a two-part thriller," Mr. Duperreault said of the write-downs in an interview with Bloomberg. "For the future we would expect that we wouldn't be seeing some of these one-time charges."