Deutsche Telekom to cut 4,000 workers from its T-Systems unit, report says

Duetsche Telekom's T-Systems IT division will lay off about 7.5 percent, or 4,000 employees, according to Reuters, which cited an unnamed source.

The source said that the job cuts will be presented at the telco's supervisory board meeting later this month.

A previous report in German newspaper Handelsblatt said that T-Systems would cut nearly 6,000 jobs, but did not cite where it got its figure from.

Reinhard Clemens, T-Systems' CEO, told his employees in a memo sent to employees today that the company needed to restructure to more effectively deal with a host of new competitors.  

"We will spell out the developed approaches more clearly in the coming weeks and then communicate concrete measures which will be taken," Clemens said in the memo.

T-Systems, which currently employs about 53,000 workers, is a well-known IT solutions provider whose client list includes the likes of Siemens and Deutsche Post DHL. Over the past four quarters, T-Systems' employee base fell by 2,600, or 5 percent, to 50,200.

Like its peers CSC and EDS, the company is seeing a growing desire for cloud services.

For more:
- Reuters has this article
- Bloomberg has this article

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