IBM is planning to make redundant about 10,000 positions in Europe in a bid to lower costs at its slow-growth services unit and prepare the business for a spinoff, according to Bloomberg citing people familiar with the matter. The wide-ranging losses will affect about 20 percent of staff in the region. The UK and Germany will be most impacted, but a number of employees in Poland, Slovakia, Italy and Belgium will also be let go.
IBM announced the job cuts in Europe earlier in November during a meeting with European labor representatives, according to a union officer briefed on proceedings. IBM’s legacy IT services business will be the hardest hit.
IBM said in October it’s planning to spin off the business and focus on its new hybrid-cloud computing and AI unit, which the company hopes will return it to revenue growth. IBM said it aims to complete the carve-out as a tax-free spinoff to IBM shareholders by the end of 2021.
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