Following the appointment of Gilles Delfassy as CEO of ST-Ericsson, in succession to Alain Dutheil COO of STMicroelectronics, a number of proposed job cuts have been announced.
In Dutheil's time, two job cutting rounds were completed. Last November, the company cut operating expenses by $250m in an initial round of restructuring.
Then, in April 2009, the company said it would cut 1,200 jobs expected to save $230m in costs. Those cost savings will start to take effect in Q1 2010.
Now, since Delfassy has taken over, it has been announced that a further 600 jobs could be cut with the aim of saving a further $115m.
"These savings are expected to come from reductions in operating expenses and spending, along with an extensive R&D efficiency programme," ST-Ericsson said in the statement.
ST-Ericsson, a 50/50 joint venture between Ericsson and STMicroelectronics, started operations on February 2nd 2009 and reported sales of $391m for an operating loss of $98m.
ST-Ericsson burnt through $42m of cash in Q1, and said it expected to burn cash through 2009. Partly this was due to the $70-90m cost of the re-structuring programme.
In October, ST-Ericsson said it intended to break for the year even on sales of $750m to $800m, but added that a stronger euro was adding to difficulties in achieving the aim of break-even.
ST-Ericsson says it has 8,000 employees, 85% of whom work on R&D.
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