Ericsson may lay off thousands this summer

Ericsson allegedly aims to make between 3,000 and 4,000 staff redundant this summer, according to a report from a Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet (SvD).

The report added thousands more may have to leave the company later.

A little over a year later in April 2016, Telecoms equipment maker announced an accelerated transformation plan to speed the changes and accelerate growth.

Though cuts were not mentioned directly, Ericsson president and CEO Hans Vestberg said the company restructuring would be “leaner.”

“We are not satisfied with our overall growth and profitability development over past years. We are today announcing further actions to accelerate strategy execution and to drive efficiency and growth across the company even harder. We will create a leaner, more fit for purpose organization, to cater for the needs of different customer segments and to faster capture market opportunities,"  said Vestberg in April.

In 2014, the company announced a cost and efficiency programme which aims to achieve net annual cost savings of $1.1 billion by 2017.  As part of the cost cutting, the company made 2,200 redundancies, mainly in R&D and supply in Sweden, in March 2015, the Wireless reports.

In response to the reports on job cuts, Ericsson said they do not comment on rumors and speculations, and said it is on track,  but more remains to be done in order to achieve the cost cutting goals set in 2014.

"In our report for Q1 we stated that we had begun taking additional measures beyond the $1.1 billion cost and efficiency program. Hence, we are adapting our operations to current mobile broadband project volumes, which primarily impacts service delivery. In parallel, as announced on April 21, we are implementing structural changes to further accelerate strategy execution and drive efficiency and growth even harder across the company,"  said a spokesperson from  Ericsson.

Ericsson employed 115,300 at the end of the first quarter 2016, down from roughly 116,300 at the end of last year.

In other news, Bank of America is reportedly expected to reduce staffing in its consumer banking division - by as many as 8,000, the USA Today reports.

The USA Today reported the bank has already reduced the staffing in its consumer division from more than 100,000 in 2009 to about 68,400 as of the end of the first quarter of 2016, said Thong Nguyen, Bank of America's president of retail banking and co-head of consumer banking at the Morgan Stanley Financials Conference last Tuesday.

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