Seagate Executive Sees 10% Cut To U.S. Workforce

Source: Reuters

January 12, 2009 12:41 PM

LAS VEGAS - Seagate (NYSE: STX) Technology Inc , the world's largest hard-disk drive maker, is planning to cut around 10 percent of its U.S. workforce in a restructuring program to be announced later this month, a company executive said.

Seagate's overall workforce is roughly 54,000, and the majority of its employees and operations are in the U.S., Brian Dexheimer, president of the company's consumer division, told Reuters in an interview at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week.

The hard disk drive industry has felt the brunt of the global economic slowdown, with demand for personal computers and other electronic products weakening due to soft corporate and consumer spending on technology.

Dexheimer said the overall hard disk drive industry took a "pretty good shock to the system" in the latter part of 2008, when demand collapsed.

"We are preparing for a pretty tough environment here over the next 12 months," he said.



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