IBM announces 2,800 job cuts

NEWS IBM has announced 2,800 job cuts and the closure of a hard disk manufacturing plant in Hungary. The closure of the plant in Szekesfehervar will account for 2,100 redundancies - with 600 further cuts coming in its services division and 100 from elsewhere in its hard disk business. The cuts represent less than one per cent of Big Blue's total workforce of around 320,000 - though this is the second major round of redundancies this year. Earlier in the year IBM laid off 15,000 workers. An IBM spokeswoman told Reuters the closure in Hungary does not affect the company's deal to sell most of its hard drive assets to Hitachi, which is still on course to be finalised by the end of the year. The 600 cuts in the services division is a result of IBM's purchase of ProcewaterhouseCooopers Consulting.