FRANKFURT (Reuters) – German industrial group Siemens plans to cut 7,800 jobs worldwide, or about 2 percent of its workforce, to complete a wide-ranging restructuring of the company, it said on Friday.
About 3,300 of the jobs lost will be in Germany, where the trains-to-turbines group employs 115,000 people.
Siemens said the cuts – which will eliminate layers of management structure and are designed to speed up decision-making – would save it about 1 billion euros ($ 1.14 billion), which it would reinvest for growth.
It said most of the productivity gains would be realized by the end of 2016.
“Our Vision 2020 concept will enable us to get our company back on a sustainable growth path and close the profitability gap to our competitors,” said Chief Executive Joe Kaeser, who took over in a boardroom coup in 2013.
Siemens added that it had hired more than 11,000 people since the start of its fiscal year in October.
A source familiar with the matter had said on Thursday that Siemens planned to cut more than 7,000 jobs.
(Reporting by Georgina Prodhan; editing by Thomas Atkins)
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