Cisco to axe 10,000 jobs

Cisco Systems may cut as many as 10,000 jobs, roughly 14% of its workforce, to combat weak profit growth, according to Bloomberg.

Around 7,000 jobs will be eliminated by the end of August, the news service said anonymous sources have revealed. Cisco is also providing early-retirement packages to about 3,000 workers who accepted buyouts, it said. But it was unclear how the redundancies would fall globally.

In May, Cisco Systems warned that company profit and sales in the current quarter may miss analysts' estimates. At the time, Cisco Systems' chief executive of 16 years, John Chambers, said he would cut jobs in anticipation of lower public sector spending.

Cisco also said at the time that it expected profit to be 37 to 39 cents a share in the fourth fiscal quarter and sales to be between $10.8bn and $11.1bn, below average analyst predictions of 41 cents profit and sales of $11.6bn. In 2010, the company grew its revenues by 11%.

Earlier this year, Chambers announced plans for a company shake-up, saying Cisco would refocus on its core markets in routers and switching, collaboration, datacentre virtualisation and video.

Shortly afterwards the company closed down its Flip video camera business, confirming that its consumer division is a top target in the planned company revamp.

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