By Jo Best, 20 January 2004 14:05
NEWS France Telecom has announced that it is to shed 14,500 jobs internationally – seven per cent of its total workforce - in an attempt to lever itself out of debt.
The bulk of the cuts will be shared between France Telecom staff in France and in Poland, where the telco has a substantial interest in local carrier TPSA.
It's hoped that the jobs will go through early retirement, reassignment to other areas in the French civil service and natural staff turnover. The company currently has no plans for redundancies, according to France Telecom's CEO, Thierry Breton, who announced the job cuts to unions yesterday.
Breton has previously declared his aim of cutting the France Telecom workforce by over 22,000 by 2005. It's thought the radical shake-up at the state-controlled telco comes in response to the company's not-insignificant debts.
At last count, France Telecom had landed itself with around £34bn of debt, following a spending spree that saw it buy up mobile operator Orange for £38bn and invest in several R&D acquisitions for its ISP, Wanadoo, at the height of the dot-com boom.
A law recently passed in France that removed the obligation for the government to retain a majority stake in the company - it currently owns 53 per cent - could see the French authorities pull out of the operator, allowing greater freedom in managing its financial affairs.
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