Wharf-based firms in global job threats

By John Hill on May 22, 2008 9:00 AM |

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INTERNATIONAL news agency Thomson Reuters is set to shave 1,500 staff from its worldwide workforce.

The newly-merged financial data and news provider will reportedly cut around three per cent of its 50,000 employees in the next year, including 650 content and technology jobs and 140 of the company’s 2,600 journalists.

Union members are considering strike action after news broke of the move this week.

Lehman’s cuts are blamed on the fall-out from the crisis which hit the US credit markets last year, while Thomson Reuters is undergoing a £385million “cost synergy programme” following the acquisition of Reuters by Canadian corporation Thomson in April.

It is expected that all Thomson Reuters job losses will occur in the Markets division, as opposed to the North America-oriented Professional sector.

The Markets division is a hybrid of Reuters and the news and financial wing of Thomson. It boasts 193 offices worldwide, including a base in Canary Wharf’s South Colonnade.

Reports suggest staff will be informed of the company’s plans in the next few weeks. Some of the cuts will be compulsory, but involuntary redundancies are also being considered.

An e-mail sent to staff on Monday by Reuters editor-in-chief David Schlesinger suggested more than half of the cuts would be made in Europe due to areas of “natural overlap and duplication in coverage”.

Thomson Reuters refused to comment on the plans, but National Union of Journalists national organiser Barry Fitzpatrick says members are prepared to take industrial action if voluntary cuts are not considered.

Lehman Brothers also remained tight-lipped about its possible job cuts, but it is suggested that around five per cent of the company’s workforce will face redundancy in a process which swung into action this week.

Sources within the company told The Wharf it would be “unrealistic” to suggest that Docklands employees were not in danger of being axed.