Dot Com News from Week of October 15, 2001

• 10/19/01 - Scientific-Atlanta plans to cut 750 jobs, or about 10 percent of its work force, in the wake of a 42 percent drop in first-quarter earnings.
• 10/19/01 - Planet Hollywood, filed a petition for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for the second time in two years. The company blamed a decline in tourist travel following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
• 10/19/01 - American Classic Voyages Co., the operator of Delta Queen riverboat and Hawaii cruises, has filed for a petition for reorganization under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code in Wilmington, Del. Since September 11 the company said that since the attacks, bookings are down 50% and cancellations jumped to 30%. American Classic said no refunds are being offered by the company to passengers who paid for their cruises in cash, and those who obtained travel insurance or paid for their cruises with credit cards can seek refunds from those companies.
• 10/19/01 - ConSors Discount Broker, in an attempt to achieve profitability, will trim its staff by 25% or 300 positions. The German independent online broker is losing market share to other bigger bank-owned competitors.
• 10/19/01 - In response to a decline in spending in the telecommunications sector, Sycamore Networks plans to chop off 25% of its entire workforce or about 240 employees. This is in an effort to lower expenses with no indication of an upswing in customer spending.
• 10/19/01 - E-business consultancy firm Mphasis BFL has terminated 70 of its employees as well as moving a certain amount of employees from its United States location back to India. Stiffer procedures to recruit new employees are also planned.
• 10/18/01 - Chip equipment company Varian Semiconductor Equipment Associates said it is slashing its worldwide work force by about 12 percent as the company extends its cost-cutting efforts to respond to "increasingly difficult business conditions." The job cuts will leave Varian with about 1,500 workers.
• 10/18/01 - Communications chipmaker PMC-Sierra on Thursday reported a third-quarter loss, as expected, compared with a year-earlier profit, as sales fell 69 percent. The company also said it would cut 24 percent of its work force. PMC-Sierra said it will lay off 350 workers, beginning today, to cut costs further. As of Sept. 30, the company employed 1,475 people.
• 10/18/01 - Information-technology services company, CMG announced it will cut 470 employees in Britain and Ireland. This comes in response to seeing big contracts canceled after the attacks on America on September 11. These contracts are from the airline industry and the financial sector.
• 10/18/01 - Securities-trading firm, Bear Sterns is expected to announce a plan to reduce its workforce by 830 people or 7.5% of its 11,147 employees. When other companies have been firing staff, Bear Sterns has been well known for hiring. A company known for its loyalty to employees now has to join the ranks of downsizing businesses during a troubled economy.
• 10/18/01 - BellSouth plans to cut 3,000 employees or 2.7% of its staff despite a slight increase in profits. The company made this move due to a weakening economy.
• 10/17/01 - NetRadio Corporation announced the previously announced strategic investment transaction with The Advisory Board, Inc., a New York-based media company has been terminated because The Advisory Board, Inc. was unable to obtain financing for the transaction. On a parallel path, the Company had been pursuing alternative transactions to support continuing operations, but was unable to finalize a transaction that could be funded in the near term. In light of these developments, the Company has determined to immediately discontinue operations and terminate most of its employees.
• 10/17/01 - Ericsson has announced another 2,000 layoffs from its Swedish domestic operations, bringing the total job reductions in its home country to 4,000 this year. The company has also confirmed its international layoffs this year now total 6,000.
• 10/17/01 - Contract electronics manufacturer Celestica announced that restructuring will trim its total work force by 25 to 30 percent, while manufacturing space will be down about 20 percent from levels at the beginning of 2001. Celestica had about 29,000 employees at the beginning of 2001, meaning that cuts will total about 8,700.
• 10/17/01 - Storage products maker SanDisk announced Wednesday it expects to cut about 25 percent of its work force as it moves some assembly and test operations offshore by the end of the current quarter. The actual number of jobs cut was not immediately available.
• 10/17/01 - Dana Corp., which supplies components, modules and systems to vehicle manufacturers, plans to cut 11,000 jobs through plant closings and consolidations, as the maker of auto parts grapples with weak economic conditions worsened by last month's terrorist attacks. Dana currently employs about 75,000 people. The 15% work-force cut is in addition to some 10,000 positions eliminated during the past 18 months.
• 10/17/01 - Sprint plans to lay off about 6,000 employees and discontinue its high-speed Internet unit, ION, as it struggles to cope with the economic slowdown. Sprint also intends to eliminate 1,500 contract workers' jobs.
• 10/17/01 - Brokerage company, Merrill Lynch could eliminate up to 10,000 employees or 15% of its workforce. The company is examining whether to continue its operations in countries such as Japan, Canada, Australia and India or to considerably reduce its businesses there. The company currently has 68,200 employees.
• 10/17/01 - Network access services provider Advanced Switching Communications has layed off 36% of its staff or 50 of its approximately 140 workers. This move was made to cut costs after seeing the company's revenue drop.
• 10/17/01 - Vodafone will reduce its workforce by 600 employees or about 6% as the company sees a decline in sales of mobile phones in the United Kingdom. The cuts will range from back office staff to sales workers to management.
• 10/16/01 - Planet411.com announced that due to a lack of funding, it was unable to implement its new business plan and was ceasing operations, effective immediately. The company also announced that its remaining employees, officers and directors had resigned, effective upon the filing of a current report with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
• 10/16/01 - Kinko's, Inc., a leading provider of document solutions and business services, announced the first phase of a new strategic plan that will position the company for future growth by identifying new areas of opportunity and ways to contain costs. The organizational changes announced will result in the immediate reduction of approximately 350 field support positions, primarily from human resources, technology and operations support.
• 10/16/01 - travelbyus announced that the Company and its various subsidiaries have completed a reduction in force that resulted in the elimination of 51 positions. The reduction represents approximately 45% of the Company's employees. These actions are a direct result of the adverse effects on the demand for vacation travel caused by the weakening economy in the aftermath of last month's terrorist attacks on the United States.
• 10/16/01 - Domain name registrar Register.com has reduced its work force in New York as it moves its customer service division to Nova Scotia. Register.com said it laid off 19 full-time customer service staff members and seven temporary employees in its New York office. The company now has 31 full-time and five temporary workers in New York; overall, Register.com employs 163 people.
• 10/16/01 - ONI Systems Corp. said it would lay off approximately 125 employees, or about 16% of its work force, in response to the still-deteriorating climate for telecommunications equipment. The San Jose, Calif., maker of optical-networking equipment also said it would ask employees to take five days of vacation without pay around the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.
• 10/16/01 - TRW Inc. plans to cut 2,400 jobs from its massive automotive operations. TRW Automotive currently consists of the Occupant Safety Systems and Chassis Systems divisions, which will be consolidated into a single unit. The consolidation and job cuts, which include a 10% reduction in salaried positions, will leave TRW Automotive with about 67,600 workers.
• 10/16/01 - United Technologies which received a blow due to the terrorist attacks of September 11, announced it will cut approximately 5,000 workers during 2002. The company which manufactures specifically, Pratt & Whitney aircraft engines, said in late September it would be required to cut staff but did not indicate exactly how many people.
• 10/16/01 - Unisys Corporation will lay off roughly 3,000 employees worldwide as it announced that revenues for the quarter dropped by 6%. The company blamed "increased economic uncertanties worldwide" and said it will need to decrease costs during the fourth quarter. Retirement packages will be handed to workers in the United States.
• 10/16/01 - AT&T and British Telecom's joint venture, Concert, will close costing AT&T between $200 million and $400 million and costing 2,300 employees their jobs. It is expected however that BT will re-employ about a third of the 6,000 Concert workers.
• 10/16/01 - Philips' joint venture, ASML, announced it will cut 1,400 jobs or 17% of its workforce. Philips, which is Europe's largest consumer electronics company, reported lower-than-anticipated losses and had announced in July plans to cut 4,000 jobs or 2% of its workforce.
• 10/16/01 - News provider Reuters announced it will cut 500 jobs in order to save 30 million pounds or $43.47 million yearly. Specifically, the effect of the September 11 attacks against America is expected to have cost the company a total of 16 million pounds or $23.1 million.
• 10/15/01 - eLOT, Inc. announced that it and its subsidiary eLottery, Inc., have filed for reorganization under Chapter 11 of the Federal bankruptcy code in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. eLOT, Inc. is a leading application service provider of Internet marketing and advertising technology for lotteries.
• 10/15/01 - Commerce One Inc., a California business-to-business software company, said it will shed 46 percent of its workforce and spin off a number of its services units to cope with the slowing U.S. economy. The company said in a statement that it would cut 1,300 positions, 700 through layoffs and the remaining 600 through the "planned spin-off of a number of services operations that are not directly related to Commerce One products."
• 10/15/01 - In-flight e-mail provider Tenzing Communications says it will cut 80 workers, more than half its staff, as demand from airlines dwindles because of slumping passenger travel. Seattle-based Tenzing said it would scale back marketing and keep 70 workers, focusing on installing its service on planes of existing customers, many of whom face severe financial woes following the Sept. 11 U.S. hijack attacks.
• 10/15/01 - Bethlehem Steel filed for Chapter 11 protection, hurting from cheap foreign imports and high labor and retiree costs. The move came just weeks after the steelmaker replaced its chief executive with a turnaround expert.
• 10/15/01 - Germany's Commerzbank will eliminate approximately 3,400 people by the close of 2003 and restructure its operations. Although the company expects staff turnover and its freeze on hiring initiated in June to help, reducing its workforce would ultimately lower operating expenses.
• 10/15/01 - Siemens will let 7,000 employees go within at its telecommunications-equipment units. 2,000 of these cuts are in Germany alone. This is expected to save the company approximately 2 billion euros or $1.8 billion.