Nortel's Roth says end of layoffs in sight
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(Figures in U.S. dollars unless noted)
TORONTO, July 19 (Reuters) - John Roth, the chief executive
of Nortel Networks Corp. , while maintaining that
"visibility" was still cloudy for future quarters, told Reuters
on Thursday that the end of layoffs was in sight.
While Nortel plans to take further restructuring charges
related to layoffs for the third quarter, it gave no specific
details. But Roth did say that Nortel had not yet accounted for
the severance pay of the remaining 7,000 jobs it plans to cut
in the next eight weeks.
"It won't be the same magnitude per employee, and on top of
that comes some other costs of closing down the other things
that those employees are related to. Perhaps closing down
buildings, getting out of a site, those kind of things," Roth
said. "It will be a modest charge compared to what we took this
quarter."
Last quarter Nortel took a charge of $833 million related
to cutting 23,000 employees.
As for forecasts, Roth said, "visibility is terribly bad".
"We feel we're at a bit of a trough in terms of moving from
having to downsize to now focus on bringing our new products
out. We still have some work to do in the next eight weeks to
continue the downsizing exercise, but we're now starting to
look past that."
Nortel lived up to an earlier warning on Thursday,
delivering a stinging second-quarter loss of $19.4 billion as
revenues declined, and while no forecasts were given, the
company said its financial health has improved.
($1=$1.54 Canadian)
REUTERS
Rtr 23:23 07-19-01 |
