Source:
Economic Times India24 Oct, 2008, 1220 hrs IST, AGENCIES
NEW YORK: Xerox Corp, the largest maker of high-volume colour printers, plans to eliminate 3,000 jobs in the next six months and speed manufacturing cost cuts to cope with an "unpredictable economy".
The job cuts are being made in administration and manufacturing through voluntary buyout packages, spokesman Bill McKee said. Sales employees won't be affected, he said. The reductions represent 5.2 per cent of the company's workforce of 57,400 as of Sept 30.
Chief Executive Officer Anne Mulcahy is accelerating a cost- cutting program after sales of equipment fell 2.7 per cent in the third quarter on slowing US demand for production printers.
Profit margins shrank on lower prices and higher administrative expenses. Xerox said fourth-quarter profit will trail analysts' estimates even before it spends $400 million to ramp up the restructuring program.
"Xerox is trying to get ahead of the economic downturn by aggressively going after costs in order to maintain margins," Shannon Cross, an analyst with Cross Research in Livingston, New Jersey, wrote in an e-mailed statement. She rates Xerox "buy."
Read more:
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Infotech/Xerox_to_cut_3000_jobs_in_6_mths/articleshow/3636265.cms
Job loss is astronomical.