Yahoo gives 2,000 employees the chop

Yahoo's troubles continue with the announcement that 2,000 more staff are to be made redundant. Employees affected are yet to be notified and in an statement made yesterday ( April 4 ) the company indicated that approximately 2,000 jobs would be lost, via redundancy or what Yahoo described as “phased transition.”

This will be another large lay off of staff for Yahoo, which has struggled recently against competition from Google and Facebook. It is hoped that the move will cut costs and make Yahoo more competitive. “Today’s actions are an important next step toward a bold, new Yahoo – smaller, nimbler, more profitable and better equipped to innovate as fast as our customers and our industry require,” said Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson. The plan is to concentrate on Yahoo's core businesses and redeploy resources “to our most urgent priorities.” The firm aims at saving some USD 375 million a year via the redundancies and expects to pay “the majority of an estimated USD 125 to USD 145 million pretax cash charge relating to employee severance in its second quarter financial results.” Yahoo also indicates that further charges related to the redundancy procedures could be incurred, but does not suggest a figure. More details about future strategy will be released on April 17 , along with the first quarter financial results. For now, CEO Scott Thompson says Yahoo's goal “is to get back to our core purpose – putting our users and advertisers first – and we are moving aggressively to achieve that goal.” Yahoo is a digital media company, headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, USA and founded in 1994. The company operates a search engine, email accounts, news services and social media and claims more than half a billion users worldwide. Liam Lever, liam@romania-insider.com