Panasonic to cut chip division workforce by half: Reports

Panasonic is set to cut its chip division workforce in half, axing thousands of jobs as the electronics giant overhauls its battered balance sheet after record losses, Japanese media reports said.

The plan to shrink Panasonic's money-losing semiconductor business could also see it sell off some chip manufacturing plants, the leading Nikkei business daily said, without citing sources.

Panasonic, which has chip factories both in Japan and overseas, would axe 7,000 jobs from the unit by March 2015 from a total of 14,000 employees, through an unspecified number of layoffs, early retirements and moving workers to other divisions, the Nikkei said.

Yahoo laying off 500 under-performing employees: Report

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has begun firing as many as 500 under-performing employees, All Things D's Kara Swisher reports. After joining the company in July 2012, Mayer instituted new employee performance reviews one year ago.

Now, Swisher reports, Mayer is planning to let go any employees who were rated "misses" or "occasionally misses" at least twice during the past five quarters.

Swisher says as many as 500 employees could eventually be effected. She says that some Yahoo employees are already being let go.

Yahoo has many thousands more employees than many industry experts believes it needs to have.

Before Mayer took over Yahoo, top executives there had plans to cut headcount from approximately 15,000 down to 4,000 -- though that would have involved spinning out Yahoo's search business.

Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/careers/job-trends/Yahoo-laying-off-500-under-performing-employees-Report/articleshow/24980658.cms?intenttarget=no

US tech giants face uncertain future

Outsiders often think of Silicon Valley as a constantly changing landscape, a place where fortunes rise and fall with the next great idea. Now some of the technology industry's biggest names are finding out that once you fall behind, it is pretty hard to catch up. 

Hewlett-Packard announced several significant personnel changes, along with sharply lower revenue and narrower operating profit margins. It was the latest in a string of disappointing earnings news from big technology companies that has some asking if the industry, after at least five years of growth, is finally slowing down. 
Click here to Read more. 

BlackBerry plans more layoffs, fired U.S. sales chief: report

The ailing smartphone maker is eyeing additional layoffs beyond the 5,000 announced during its previous fiscal year, says The Wall Street Journal. BlackBerry is eyeing another round of layoffs as part of its ongoing restructuring, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Citing "people familiar with the matter," the Journal said Wednesday that the job cuts would affect middle management across the sales and support divisions. The new layoffs would come on top of the 5,000 cuts planned during the company's last fiscal year.

One person already hit by a job loss is Richard Piasentin, BlackBerry's vice president of sales in the U.S. The Journal's sources say the U.S. sales chief was fired in June. A BlackBerry spokesman confirmed Piasentin's departure to the Journal but declined to comment about any layoffs.

Jobs fair and unemployment info sessions planned for laid-off IBM workers

The state is offering more unemployment information sessions and now a job fair for laid-off workers from IBM and other Vermont businesses. All events will be held at the Sheraton Hotel and Conference Center in South Burlington.

The Rapid Response unemployment information sessions are scheduled back-to-back for Thursday: two morning sessions from 9 to 10:30 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. to noon. Workshops will include resume writing, interviewing skills and information on financial restructuring after a layoff, according to a news release from the Vermont Department of Labor.

An Employer and Training Provider Job Fair is scheduled for 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Monday. A list of employers planning to attend was not available as of publication time; booths will include employers, training service providers, financial advisers and health care program representatives.

Read more at: http://vtdigger.org/2013/07/10/jobs-fair-and-unemployment-info-sessions-planned-for-laid-off-ibm-workers/#sthash.scoGMQLX.dpuf

IBM’s Layoffs Exceed 1,600 People

According to employee group Alliance@IBM, an affiliate of the Communications Workers of America union, layoffs at IBM have more than exceeded the initial estimates of 1,600 positions. These include at least 222 people from areas like marketing and 165 in semiconductor research and development.

IBM – one of the world’s largest computer services providers – has initiated a global restructuring plan, laying-off nearly 2,800 employees in North America alone. And more cuts are expected in nations like India as the company intents on spending $1 billion globally to trim its workforce.

According to the official national IBM employee’s union, the total number of lay-offs in the US as of June 15, 2013 was 2,792. But some grimly project the number of workers cut could hit upwards of 8,000 – roughly two percent of the company’s workforce. Others speculate the number to be closer to 5,000.
Read more at http://www.inquisitr.com/761676/ibms-layoffs-exceed-1600-people/#psDrpTAoKK5YTIRI.99

IBM lays off undisclosed number of workers

IBM has laid off an undisclosed number of workers this week as the company intensifies its focus on some of some of the technology industry's hottest markets.

The cutbacks are part of a reorganization that IBM Corp. executives disclosed in April during a conference call discussing the Armonk, New York, company's first-quarter earnings. IBM said it would spend $1 billion reshuffling the types of jobs it needs in its workforce this year, with most of the changes coming before the end of June. The company indicated most of the layoffs would occur outside the US. Read More at Huff post.

Yahoo layoffs, possibly this month, could reach thousands, report says

Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson may be close to announcing a major reorganization and sizable layoffs at the Sunnyvale Internet company, which has been grappling with falling revenue, dissident investors and a changing Internet landscape.


Thompson's plans could lead to thousands of layoffs being announced in coming weeks, according to two news reports Monday that cited unnamed sources.

But analysts warn that cutbacks alone won't solve the company's problems.

"I wouldn't say there is fat to be cut. I would say there has to be a transformation of the company," said Ben Schachter, who follows Internet companies for Macquarie Equities Research. "They cannot continue to conduct business as they have for the last 10 years."

IT services co Tieto to cut 1,300 jobs

Finnish IT services group Tieto plans to cut 1,300 jobs, or 7 per cent of its staff, as it struggles to compete against global rivals like IBM .

The company's share rose 6 percent to the highest level in 13 months on the move, which Tieto said will cut annual costs by 50 million euros ($66 million).

The cuts will include 500 jobs in Finland, 300 in Sweden, and around 500 elsewhere, the company said.

Goldman Plans More Layoffs

According to Reuters, The Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) is moving ahead with its cost cutting plan. To start with, the bank has sacked employees in its trading and investment banking divisions.

In 2011, Goldman reduced 2,400 positions, out of which 1800 layoffs took place in March 2011 as part of its annual review process. The recent announcement of job cuts also comes under Goldman's annual retrenchment of workers, who performed below expectations.

Layoffs hit again at Connexion Technologies

Connexion Technologies has laid off 232 workers – more than half its staff – in its second round of layoffs this year.


The layoffs by the company, which builds and manages telecommunication networks for residential communities, included the elimination of 106 employees in North Carolina, mostly at its Cary headquarters.

Connexion was founded in 2002 by former Cary Mayor Glen Lang, who remains CEO. The company had 455 workers before this week’s layoffs.

AOL cutting 40 more jobs

AOL Inc (AOL) is firing as many as 40 people in the group that includes its AOL Instant Messenger service, while executives Eric van Miltenburg and Jason Shellen depart, three people with knowledge of the matter said.

David Tempkin, who now runs the mobile group, will become head of the consumer applications division, which includes mobile, AIM, e-mail and about.me, an online profile application, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the changes haven't been announced. He replaces van Miltenburg, they said. Shellen was head of AIM, the instant messaging service.

AOL, based in New York, has 5,660 employees and is trimming costs amid declining sales. AIM's staff cuts are related to the division's underperformance, the people said. AOL, led by Chief Executive Officer Tim Armstrong, could eliminate more staff in other departments, these people said.

Oracle to cut 1000 jobs at Sun

Oracle Corp CEO Larry Ellison cheered the closing of his company's $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems on Wednesday, vowing that Sun will immediately add to Oracle's profits.

He said layoffs won't be as severe as some industry analysts were predicting. Analysts had expected Sun to suffer huge job cuts once Oracle closed the acquisition. But Ellison said Oracle wants to bulk up Sun's staff to improve its sales -- a problem Sun has had trouble cracking since the dot-com meltdown a decade ago.

Oracle is hiring 2,000 people over the next few months for the Sun businesses, while layoffs from the acquisition will be about half that number, Ellison said.

"We're hiring, not firing. We're not cutting Sun to profitability," Ellison said at a conference with industry analysts at Oracle's headquarters here. "We think Sun's a growing business."

Ellison also confirmed that he's interested in buying the Golden State Warriors basketball team, a prospect that had been rumored.

"I'm trying," he said, in response to a question. "Unfortunately you can't have a hostile takeover of a basketball team." The line that got laughs because Oracle is a highly acquisitive company and won a bruising hostile takeover fight for rival PeopleSoft, a $10.3 billion deal Oracle closed in 2005.

Ellison had previously expressed interest in buying an NBA franchise and could take the Warriors if current top man Chris Cohan eventually decides to sell.

Oracle said Wednesday that it completed the Sun acquisition, one week after the European Union offered its long-awaited approval of the deal. European regulators determined the combined company would not harm competition in the database software markets, where Oracle dominates but a Sun division is a growing rival.

Sun was a dot-com highflyer that advanced the technology used to link computers, making them more useful as a network.

The deal with Oracle was announced last April. The US Department Justice cleared it four months later. With Sun, Oracle gets ownership of the Java programming language, which runs on more than a billion devices, and the Solaris operating system. Oracle also gets sophisticated server technology that it can bundle with its software. Sun is the world's No. 4 server maker.

One reason job losses may be limited is the fact Sun has already cut deeply because of its sagging finances. In October, Sun revealed plans to cut up to 3,000 jobs as the antitrust scrutiny dragged on. Sun has already cut about 7,600 workers in three previous rounds of layoffs.

Sun had 27,596 employees at the end of September. Previous Oracle acquisitions have been followed by deep job cuts.

Oracle fired some 5,000 workers after completing the PeopleSoft deal. Many of the layoffs came from PeopleSoft's 11,000-plus work force. The next year, Oracle cut about 2,000 jobs after absorbing Siebel Systems Inc, a company it bought for $5.85 billion and had 4,700 workers.

Xerox to cut 2,500 jobs

Xerox Corp said that it plans to cut some 2,500 jobs, or five percent of its workforce, in a cost-cutting move aimed at saving some $200 million a year.

Xerox, which had 53,600 employees at the end of December, has already slashed 3,500 jobs starting in late 2008.

The latest job cuts were announced by Xerox chief executive Ursula Burns during a presentation of the photocopier company's fourth-quarter results.

Burns said some of the job losses would come in Europe but did not give a figure. She said the restructuring would cost $280 million this year with $30 million related to Xerox's $6.4-billion acquisition of Affiliated Computer Services, the world's largest diversified business outsourcing firm.

Burns said she expected the ACS acquisition to close next month. "Once completed, Xerox will be the world leader in business process and document management," she said.

The Norwalk, Connecticut-based Xerox said net profit rose to $180 million in the fourth quarter from $1 million in the corresponding quarter a year ago.

Revenue declined by three percent to $4.22 billion, better than the $3.92 billion expected by Wall Street analysts.

"We delivered a strong close to a difficult year, with solid operational results that reflect our disciplined approach to generating cash and reducing costs," Burns said in a statement.

"During the fourth quarter, we saw signs of improvement in several areas including developing markets, and we remain quite confident in our strong global competitive position," she said

"However, we believe revenue will continue to be under pressure until there is a more sustainable economic recovery," Burns said.

"To help offset this challenge, we remain focused on cost and expense management and sizing our business to better match current revenue levels."

Berkshire cuts 21k jobs in '09

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway reported 21,000 fewer employees than it had at the end of 2008 amid a slump at the firm's manufacturing and retail units.

Berkshire and its subsidiaries have about 225,000 workers, the company said this week in regulatory filings. That is 8.6 per cent lower than the 246,083 disclosed in the 2008 annual report. Berkshire provided the jobs information in a document tied to its planned $26 billion takeover of railroad Burlington Northern Santa Fe Buffett did not reply to a request, left with an assistant, for comment on the cuts.

Buffett, Berkshire’s CEO, oversees a collection of more than 70 subsidiaries that sell products including Geico car insurance, Fruit of the Loom T-shirts and Dairy Queen ice cream. Profit at the firm's manufacturing, service and retail businesses plunged by more than half in the first nine months of the year, and Buffett replaced the CEOs of two operating units whose sales suffered in the recession.

"When times are good, you are going to have more people employed than when times are bad," Buffett, 79, said this month in a video address to the 37,000 railroad employees that Berkshire will take on next year with the completion of the Burlington Northern takeover.

Fruit of the Loom announced in March it would lay off 3,000 textile workers in El Salvador because of excess inventory, La Prensa Grafica reported, citing Jose Antonio Escobar, president of Camara de la Industria Textil y de la Confeccion de El Salvador.The newspaper reported on December 3 that the company plans to hire back 1,000 workers.

Fruit of the Loom had more than 34,000 workers at the end of 2008, according to Berkshires most recent annual report, the largest total among its operating units. John Shivel, a spokesman for Bowling Green, Kentuckybased Fruit of the Loom, declined to comment.

Buffett told shareholders at the firm's annual meeting in May that he expected more cuts at Berkshire following reductions last year at Clayton Homes Inc, which builds manufactured housing, and brickmaker Acme Building Brands. Berkshire reported its first quarterly loss since 2001 in the first three months of this year. The firm returned to profit in the second and third quarters, helped by an advance in the stock market.

"We will be adding people at some point, but we will not do it until we see the demand come back," Buffett said in a September interview conducted by the CEO of Business Wire. "It will be a little slow because we do not want to go through what we did before. Although, I will guarantee you that three years from now, our brick companies, our carpet company, and our insulation company will all be employing far more people than now."

ST-Ericsson to lay off 600 staff globally

Chip maker ST-Ericsson has said that it plans to cut around 600 jobs worldwide as part of a move to save $115 million annually.

The joint venture between Swedish wireless equipment firm LM Ericsson AB and Swiss chipmaker STMicroelectronics said that it will conduct a global work force review. It will announce further details of the layoffs, and which countries will be affected after it has been in contact with the related unions.

The savings will add to a previous savings program announced in July. To reach the annual savings target ST-Ericsson will also reduce operating expenses and introduce an efficiency program within its research and development operations. ST-Ericsson was formed as a joint venture between Ericsson and STMicroelectronics in February 2009 with main headquarters in Geneva.

Adobe cutting 680 jobs

Adobe Systems, known for its Photoshop editing programme and Acrobat document software, announced that it was cutting some 680 jobs worldwide, about nine percent of its workforce.

Adobe, in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), said it would incur between $65 million and $71 million in restructuring charges because of the layoffs.

Adobe said the jobs being cut only involve employees who were with the San Jose, California-based company ahead of its October acquisition of Web analytics firm Omniture Inc.

Adobe, which employed 7,564 people worldwide at the end of August, also produces the Flash and Shockwave software used in many games and Internet applications.

Adobe shares were trading 0.14 percent higher at 36.65 dollars in after-hours electronic trading in New York.

Johnson & Johnson to cut 7,000 to 8,000 jobs

Johnson & Johnson will eliminate about 6 per cent to 7 per cent of its global workforce, or some 7,000 to 8,000 positions, as the diversified healthcare company restructures and seeks cost savings, the company said on Tuesday.

The company said it expects to generate annual pre-tax cost savings of $1.4 billion to $1.7 billion in 2011.

"We are announcing a series of actions and plans designed to ensure that our company remains well-positioned and appropriately structured for sustainable, long-term growth in the health care industry," J&J Chief Executive Officer William Weldon said in a statement.

J&J, which employs about 117,000 people, said it expects to record a pre-tax charge of about $1.1 billion to $1.3 billion in the fourth quarter associated with the restructuring. It backed its 2009 forecast of $4.54 to $4.59 per share, excluding special items.

Cost savings will be achieved mainly by reducing layers of management, increasing individual spans of control, and simplifying business structures and processes, the company said in a statement.

Nokia Siemens to cut thousands of jobs: Company

Finnish-German telecom equipment maker Nokia Siemens said on Tuesday that it could reduce its 64,000-strong workforce by seven to nine percent, or by 4,500 to 5,800 jobs, in a cost-cutting drive.

The cost-cutting is to "improve financial performance and return to growth" by reducing 500 million euros (732 million dollars) in annualised operating expenses and production overheads by 2011, the company said.

"As part of this effort, the company will also conduct a global personnel review which may lead to headcount reductions in the range of about 7-9 percent of its current approximately 64,000 employees," it added.

Nokia, the world's biggest mobile phone maker, last month reported its first quarterly loss in a decade partly due to a 908-million-euro impairment charge for goodwill in the Nokia Siemens joint venture.

US Air to cut 1,000 jobs, reduce routes

US Airways will cut 1,000 jobs and scale back its flying routes as part of a restructuring plan to turn the struggling airline profitable again, the company announced Wednesday.

The cutbacks that will happen in the first half of 2010 include 200 pilots, 150 flight attendants and 600 airport passenger and service ramp positions, US Air said in a statement.

The Tempe, Ariz.-based airline will refocus its routes to fly through its three major hubs -- Charlotte, N.C., Philadelphia and Phoenix, Ariz. -- and Washington, D.C., through which the airline runs an hourly shuttle service to New York's LaGuardia Airport and Boston.

The change will reduce flights from Las Vegas to 36 daily departures by February next year from its current 64 flights.

The crew bases in Boston, LaGuardia and Las Vegas will also close in 2010 and relocate to one of the hubs or Washington.

US Air (LCC, Fortune 500) will drop service in Colorado Springs, Colo., and Wichita, Kan., and will also cut international flights.

The carrier will suspend flights between its Philadelphia hub and European cities including Birmingham, England; London Gatwick; Milan, Italy; Shannon, Ireland, and Stockholm, Sweden. Flights between Philadelphia and Beijing are also on hold "until economic conditions improve," the airline said.