Job cuts sweep Europe

Italian media predict that Alitalia will cut jobs

At least 13,000 workers across Europe have been told that their jobs are at risk.

In the latest wave of lay-offs, a string of telecom companies, banks, a chip maker and an airline announced sweeping cutbacks.

Most of them blamed the weak global economy for a fall in demand for their products or services.

Several also said the 11 September terrorist attacks in the US have made matters worse.

Telecoms

The Netherlands' KPN Telecom announced plans to slash 4,800 jobs, about one-tenth of its workforce.

Belgacom's merger plans with KPN collapsed

The telecom company said the cuts would reduce costs by 700m euros per year by 2003.

The cuts are desperately needed to enable KPN to service its 22bn-euro debt.

In neighbouring Belgium, between 3,000 and 4,000 workers face the axe.

The cuts are part of a restructuring of the telecom company Belgacom that will make up to 6,500 jobs redundant.

The company vowed to retrain and retain 2,500 of its workers.

In August, Belgacom and KPN called off a merger attempt.

The companies said the deal had been scuppered, in part, by a collapse in telecom share prices.

Banking

In the banking sector, the total number of job cuts rose to 22,000 in Germany alone after HypoVereinsbank kicked off the banks' reporting season with an announcement that it will slash 2,200 jobs.

The company said the job cuts would come in addition to the 7,500 jobs it had slashed already.

In Sweden, the country's third largest bank, SEB, said it would cut 1,800 jobs over the next year-and-a-half as it boosted its cost-cutting target to 2.5bn kronor per year from 2003.

SEB is burdened by high costs after several years on the mergers and acquisition trail.

SEB recently bought BfG Bank of Germany, but its ambition to merge with its competitor Swedbank failed last month.

SEB merged with the insurance company Trygg-Hansa in 1997.

Airlines

The crisis in the airline industry escalated as news reports from Italy said the national carrier Alitalia may cut up to 5,200 jobs.

That would be twice as many as its staff had been expecting.

The airline's pilots will stage a four-hour strike on Monday to protest the expected job cuts.

Alitalia would not comment on the news reports.

Semiconductors

The chip-industry supplier BE Semiconductor Industries of the Netherlands said it would cut more jobs than previously announced.

After the additional job cuts, BE Semiconductor will have slashed a quarter of its workforce.