is trimming 3,800 jobs from it corporate telecommunications division in an effort to make the unit more attractive to prospective buyers.
The German electronics and manufacturing conglomerate announced Tuesday that it was downsizing its Siemens Enterprise Communications division in order to help it rapidly transform from being a hardware supplier, to a "software solutions supplier." Siemens then wants to divest itself of the division.
The unit's workforce will be reduced from the current worldwide staff of 17,600 -- Siemens has a total workforce of 400,000 -- while 3,000 more will be moved elsewhere, probably to whoever buys the operation.
"The other 3,000 are being moved elsewhere because our goal is to find a strong partner to sell it to," said a Siemens spokesman. "Where they go is depending on the partner we find."
Siemens has reportedly discussed selling the communications division to a number of interested parties, including Nortel Networks and Alcatel-Lucent.
"This is quite obviously the final try to get the things in the right direction," said analyst Robert Gallecker of Bayerische Landesbank. "There were rumors that Siemens was in talks with different potential partners. Obviously they didn't make it, so they are trying to take the problems in its own hands to try to solve it. The only way is to try to make the division leaner and more attractive."
Siemens said 2,000 of the 3,800 job cuts would be in Germany, and that the further 1,200 out of the 3,000 jobs that would "be affected" by the sale of the communications divison, also are German based.
The company still must hold talks with its unions before the job cuts can take place, and it is hoping to get those talks under way soon.
Source:Xinhua/Agencies
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