It’s not yet known how Hewlett-Packard’s plan to shed 27 000 jobs in the next two and a half years will affect the company’s SA subsidiary.
The IT giant said on Wednesday that it plans to shed the jobs, or about 8% of its worldwide workforce of nearly 350 000 people, by the end of its 2014 financial year as its CEO Meg Whitman, installed eight months ago, works to turn around the troubled IT giant.
The company hopes to save between US$3bn and $3,5bn a year through the staff reductions and other cost-cutting measures, Whitman said on Wednesday. The job cuts will be managed through both layoffs and through offering early retirement packages.
The Associated Press reports that the job cuts represent the biggest payroll purge in the company’s storied, 73-year history.
HP SA MD Frank van Rees says it’s not yet known how the job cuts will affect the SA operation, or whether certain divisions or countries will be more affected than others, but he says it will impact on the organisation “across the board”.
HP, a pioneer of Silicon Valley, has been struggling in recent years to overcome management mistakes and to reinvent itself.
Its share price has fallen by more than 50% in the past five years while that of one of its chief rivals, IBM, has risen by more than 80%.
The HP board hired Whitman, a former eBay CEO, last year to turn around the company’s fortunes.
Despite the job cuts, HP’s second quarter earnings, released on Wednesday, beat analysts’ expectations, sending the share price up by more than 9% in after-hours trading in New York. — (c) 2012 NewsCentral Media
