IBM prepares for company's largest corporate layoff of a quarter of its employees

Sputnik
Mon, 26 Jan 2015 20:18 UTC

© Flickr/ -heinecke-

In an enormous corporate bloodletting, IBM is preparing to lay off about a quarter of its employees, following a report revealing a continued decline in revenue.

Over 110,000 employees from around the world, or roughly 26 percent of its total roster, will be laid off by the end of February, in an IBM company reorganization code-named "Project Chrome," Forbes magazine reported Monday.

According to the magazine, IBM's US offices will be hit the hardest, but other locations in its global operations will also be affected by the cuts.

In the January 20 Q4 (fourth quarter 2014) report, IBM's stated its net operating income fell 11 percent to $5.5 billion compared with $6.2 billion in the same quarter of 2013. Revenue from continuing operations fell 12 percent, an 11th consecutive quarterly decline.

IBM president Ginni Rometty said the company was making significant progress in what she euphemistically termed a "transformation" to reposition the IBM hardware portfolio for "higher value."

The company is developing new business units for its CAMSS (Cloud, Analytics, Mobile, Social and Security) support services, which include improved data transfer capabilities.

According to Forbes, laid off employees will not be considered for IBM's new business units.

In mid-2014, IBM partnered with Apple Inc. to develop a set of business applications and cloud services focused on "industry-specific solutions to business clients worldwide."

According to Forbes, the layoff will purge valuable talent the magazine states is integral to any successful launch of new products by the company, and that IBM will incur further loses as a result.

Comment: See, Obama says the economy is doing great!

IBM has rejected the layoff claim:

"IBM does not comment on rumors, even ridiculous or baseless ones," a spokesman said.

"If anyone had checked information readily available from our public earnings statements, or had simply asked us, they would know that IBM has already announced the company has just taken a $600 million charge for workforce rebalancing. This equates to several thousand people, a small fraction of what's been reported."