Ecommerce consultancy iXL cuts back in Europe

NEWS Offices in Berlin, Madrid, Hamburg, Tokyo, Sao Paolo and Los Angeles will be shut down and just over a third of the staff will be laid off. The company will keep its office in London and maintain a small outpost in Amsterdam. It will sell or spin off several of its venture groups by next March. U Bertram Ellis, CEO of iXL, said in a prepared statement: "Although we are now a smaller company than we were six months ago, I believe that this will make us a much stronger company." The company is to drop its one-off work and concentrate on its top 75 clients which include names such as AT&T, BellSouth and London's Financial Times. Web consultancies have been feeling the pinch for some time now. Last week, Framfab, the Swedish-based net consultancy closed down much of its Swedish operation to concentrate on operations in the rest of the world. "Months ago these consultancies were riding high," said Andy Kellet, analyst at the Butler Group. "But as soon as the bubble burst, they lost clients and suffered as well." iXL added that it would be concentrating on specific industries and cited travel, retail and financial services as its first targets.