Nokia Siemens plans to slash 9000 jobs

Nokia Siemens Networks is slashing 9,000 jobs, with the biggest cuts coming in Germany and Finland. The cutback represents the upper end of staff reductions of between 10 percent and 15 percent out of a total of 60,000 workers that Nokia and Siemens had envisioned when they first unveiled their joint-venture plans last year. The goal of these cuts is to save the venture as much as $2 billion per year by the end of 2010.
Nokia Siemens will attempt to transfer at least some workers, rather than simply lay them off, into businesses affiliated with the joint venture, which finally got off the ground last month. It did not estimate how many of the 9,000 would end up in the "transfer" category.

Nokia Siemens already has launched negotiations with employee representatives in Germany and Finland, with similar talks in other countries to start in the coming months. In Finland, where the company has 10,000 employees, Nokia Siemens plans an initial staff reduction of 700 employees. By the end of 2010, the company said, it expects an "adjustment" in Finland in the range of between 1,500 and 1,700 employees, including the initial 700. In Germany, the company expects staff cuts of between 2,800 and 2,900 employees between now and the end of 2010, from an initial base of approximately 13,000. The company did not detail the size of planned cuts in any other countries; it has at least some presence in every corner of the globe, with operations in 150 countries.
Nokia Siemens Networks combines what was Nokia's Networks Business Group and Siemens' carrier-related operations for fixed and mobile networks. A large part of the rationale for combining the companies' two operations was cost synergies - the largest of which is the reduction in headcount.