With so much in the news about job cuts and closures of well-known dot com companies, we at SearchtheWeb.com thought we would track these companies and Internet related sites and provide you with updated short news announcements on their status.

This Month in Dot Com News

12/15/03 BellSouth Corp. plans to eliminate more than 1,000 positions next quarter, but said it isn't clear how many people will be affected. The 1,074 positions being cut include those already lost as the company prepares for its previously announced exit from the pay-phone business later this year. 12/12/03 Web search company LookSmart plans to lay off half of its employees following the loss of its biggest client, Microsoft, according to a regulatory filing. The cuts will occur by the end of the company's fourth quarter, in December. 12/11/03 AT&T Corp. said it plans to reduce its work force by 12% instead of a previously announced 10%. The nation's largest long-distance carrier began the year with 71,000 employees, meaning roughly 8,520 employees will lose their jobs. 12/9/03 In a move to cut costs, Stamford-based Gartner Inc., a publicly traded technology research and advisory firm, plans to eliminate about 200 jobs, a reduction of 5% of its total employee headcount. The company said that affected employees will leave during this month and next quarter. Gartner will take a charge of about $30 million in connection with the job cuts. 12/9/03 America Online, in the midst of a turnaround effort, laid off 450 employees, or 2% of its work force. This is the second round of layoffs this year at the Time Warner Inc. unit. A spokesman says the layoffs are part of the company's continued cost-management effort. 12/9/03 SBC Communications Inc., the second-largest U.S. phone company by revenue, said it expects to eliminate 3,000 to 4,000 jobs in the fourth quarter and more jobs in 2004. SBC, San Antonio, is making the fourth-quarter cuts through early retirements and attrition. The reductions follow recent announcements of thousands of job cuts by such rival phone companies as Sprint Corp. and Verizon Communications Inc. 12/4/03 Calling the plan a "value enhancement initiative," Schering-Plough, a major pharmaceutical company, said that it will cut about 10% of its payroll expenses, excluding sales and FDA regulatory compliance personnel. The company said that it is starting the process with a voluntary early retirement offer to its U.S. employees. 12/4/03 Xerox, the printer and copier giant, said that it will cut about 800 jobs in the U.S., as part of a previously announced restructuring plan. The job cuts, including 200 in Rochester, will include positions in management and administration, but not manufacturing, the company said. Xerox has eliminated a total of about 15,000 jobs over the last few years and now employs a total of about 62,000 people. 12/4/03 Corning Inc. is closing two glass plants in South Carolina and Massachusetts, eliminating about 110 jobs, but is expanding operations at two plants in upstate New York, creating 70 jobs. The company said it is shuttering the plants in Charleston, S.C., and North Brookfield, Mass., due to continuing weakness in its semiconductor optics business. The plants make glass for the precision lenses used by computer-chip makers. 12/4/03 ON Semiconductor Corp. plans to close manufacturing operations at a Rhode Island plant, eliminating 330 jobs, and move those functions to a lower-cost facility overseas. 12/3/03 Adelphia Communications Corp. will consolidate its 70 call centers into 11, eliminating a number of jobs in the process. Adelphia spokeswoman Erica Stull couldn't immediately say how many jobs would be cut or identify which call centers will be shuttered. Employees who lose their jobs will be able to apply for other openings in the company. Adelphia, the country's fifth-largest cable television company with 5.3 million subscribers, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in June 2002. 12/2/03 DuPont said it will cut $200 million by consolidating product lines and $500 million by slashing jobs and turning its attention to overseas operations, likely shuttering U.S. operations. DuPont will cut fixed costs in 2004 and 2005 by $200 million to offset costs from the sale of textiles unit. The number of jobs to be cut will be disclosed in April.

November Dot Com News

11/28/03 Stolt Offshore SA, hit by continuing losses on major projects, said it expects to report a deeper financial loss for fiscal 2003 and that it will lay off 21% of its 7,000 employees. Stolt Offshore is the offshore construction unit of Stolt-Nielsen SA, the chemical-shipping giant that has been rocked by U.S. and European investigations into alleged bid-rigging in the chemicals transportation market. 11/25/03 Drafting and design software maker Autodesk announced that it will trim its work force by more than 15 percent in a move the company characterized as part of an ongoing cost-cutting program. The San Rafael, Calif.-based company said that it will lay off between 550 and 650 employees over the next two quarters. The company tallied a total work force of 3,537 for its most recent quarter. 11/24/03 Sprint plans to lay off 2,000 workers, or nearly 3% of its work force, by the end of the year as part of an effort to cut operating expenses over the next three years. Sprint said the job cuts will involve both its landline and wireless divisions. It employs about 70,000 people overall. The cuts are part of the Overland Park, Kan., telecommunications firm's reorganization around two market segments: business and residential customers. 11/21/03 Convergys says its worldwide workforce will be trimmed by 400 more jobs than the company originally announced last December. The layoffs also come at a time when Convergys is expanding dramatically in India and the Philippines, nations where the company has created 6,550 jobs in the past two years. 11/20/03 International Business Machines Corp. is cutting about 200 jobs in its software division as part of an effort to streamline operations. IBM spokesman John Reilly wouldn't specify the number of cuts, but he said they amount to a half-percent of the 38,000 employees in the software division. 11/19/03 Health-care company Johnson & Johnson plans to cut costs and a "modest" number of jobs by centralizing some functions of its five pharmaceuticals companies in a strategy aimed at freeing up money for new product development. 11/19/03 AT&T Wireless is making plans to lay off over 10% of its 30,000 workers in the next year and may outsource their jobs to India and elsewhere overseas. 11/18/03 SBC will accelerate previously announced job cuts in order to save $1.3 billion a year by 2006. SBC said it wants to reduce the number of operator call centers by one-third and consolidate its network operations centers. Since late 2001, SBC has cut some 20,000 positions, more than 15 percent of its workforce. 11/18/03 About 21,600 employees accepted a buyout offer from Verizon Communications and will leave the payroll by the end of the week, nearly double the number that the nation's biggest telephone company estimated last month. The employees include 5,600 union workers and about 16,000 nonunion managers and administrative staff. 11/18/03 Toys "R" Us Inc. said it will close 180 children's clothing and educational-toy stores. The shuttering of all 146 Kids "R" Us and 36 Imaginarium outlets, which will result in a $280 million charge, represented an admission that a large part of a strategy to diversify from mainstream toy stores had failed. Sales at the Kids "R" Us apparel outlets had plummeted since 2000, racking up big losses. About 3,800 jobs will be eliminated. 11/13/03 Graphics-software maker Adobe Systems quietly trimmed 100 jobs this week as part of an ongoing realignment. Adobe, which has approximately 3,500 workers worldwide, said it does not expect the layoffs to have a material effect on its financial projections. </li> 11/7/03 FAO Inc. said its catalog and Internet sales have been disappointing of late, and that if the trend continues the toy retailer won't have enough money to continue normal operations through the end of the month. The toy retailer also said it is exploring a sale of the company. 11/4/03 Southwest Airlines plans to close three of its nine call centers, as more customers choose to book tickets online. The decision affects 1,900 employees. 11/3/03 In an effort to round out its broadband communications business, chip maker Conexant Systems Inc. announced it will buy chip maker GlobespanVirata Inc. in a $826 million stock deal. One of the ways the two companies will improve their results is by laying off a yet-to-be-determined number of employees. Conexant currently has 1,430 employees, about 600 of whom are in Orange County and 250 in San Diego. GlobespanVirata has 970, bringing the total to about 2,400. 10/30/03 Deutsche Telekom AG said it would seek a 10% pay cut for more than half of its German staff, a move that could save the company as much as $584.3 million annually. But a powerful union rejected the proposal, raising questions about the plan's viability. Adopting a tough line ahead of the start of wage talks with unions next month, Heinz Klinkhammer, Deutsche Telekom's personnel chief, said he would demand that 100,000 employees -- mainly at the T-Com fixed-line unit -- work at least 10% fewer hours, effectively taking a pay cut of the same percentage. 10/28/03 Sony outlined on several initiatives it would implement as part of a broad restructuring to boost profitability and ensure the embattled Japanese company is better prepared for the dramatic changes taking place in the electronics industry. The company said it would cut 20,000, or 13 per cent, of its 154,500-strong workforce over three years. It also said it would shift production of cathode-ray tube TVs out of Japan, form a liquid crystal display joint venture with Samsung in 2005 and reorganise its financial services businesses under a holding company.

Dot Com News from Week of September 22, 2003

10/23/03 X10, the company that only last year billed itself as the world's largest online advertiser, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The filing came one day before the company faced a hearing in Orange County Superior Court for punitive damages following its loss to a tiny ad start-up called Advertisement Banners.com, based in Anaheim, Calif. That company had alleged that X10 had stolen its method of serving pop-under ads, or ads that show up beneath a Web page and remain on the screen once the window is closed. 10/15/03 Continuing an effort to rein in costs at its movie studio, Sony Corp.'s Sony Pictures Entertainment is preparing to eliminate 500 or more jobs over the next year and a half. The changes are the latest step in an effort by Sony Corp. of America to improve profit margins at the studio. Sony has also previously made big cutbacks in other areas, most notably its music unit, which earlier this year said it would eliminate more than 1,000 jobs. 10/15/03 The sharp contraction of the recording industry is accelerating, with the world's largest music company, Universal Music Group, expected to announce a restructuring Thursday that will slice hundreds of additional jobs from an industrywide work force that already has shed nearly one in five jobs over the last few years. 10/9/03 Troubled software maker Corel, which recently went private, announced that it plans to cut its work force by 18 percent. The company said it will lay off about 125 employees worldwide, including 73 that work at the company's headquarters in Ottawa, Canada. 10/9/03 Levi Strauss & Co., which has repeatedly defended its tax positions from charges of fraud leveled by two fired tax executives, said its 2001 net income was overstated by $26 million and that its 2003 third-quarter results were overstated by $4.9 million. Last month, it said it would cut almost 2,630 jobs, or 21% of its work force, and shutter its last North American manufacturing plants. 10/7/03 Weirton Steel filed a reorganization plan in U.S. Bankruptcy Court that calls for the elimination of 950 jobs and the termination of an underfunded pension and health-care plan that covers 10,000 retirees and their dependents. 10/2/03 Sun Microsystems was urged to cut jobs and "focus on core computing" in an analyst's open letter to executives at the computer company. 10/1/03 International Business Machines Corp., Armonk, N.Y., confirmed that it is cutting some 700 U.S. workers in its global services organization as part of normal "skills rebalancing." An IBM spokesman said that the job cuts are occurring at many locations across the country including people who work at customer locations. IBM's services organization employs 180,000 people worldwide and the company employs about 330,000. 10/1/03 PeopleSoft Inc. has begun dismissing employees as a result of its previously announced plans to cut about 7% of its work force following the purchase of rival J.D. Edwards & Co. PeopleSoft said in early September that it planned to eliminate between 750 and 1,000 jobs as part of a plan to save as much as $207 million in 2004. 10/1/03 Kodak will be cutting more jobs, reducing capital investments and physical locations and contributing less to charity as the historic shift takes shape, Chairman and Chief Executive Daniel A. Carp said in an exclusive interview with Democrat and Chronicle editors and reporters. “Our business is changing so dramatically. We just aren’t going to need as many people in the company in Rochester in the future,” Carp said. It now employs about 21,000 people, down from 61,000 in 1982. 10/1/03 Prudential Securities asked a dozen stockbrokers and managers to resign in the wake of investigations of market timing of mutual funds. 9/30/03 Verizon Communications Inc. said that it has offered a voluntary buyout package to virtually all its 74,000 management employees nationwide in a sweeping cost-cutting move. With analysts predicting competition in telecommunications will become more brutal as AT&T and cellphone operators invade the local and long-distance telephone markets, a Verizon spokeswoman said the buyout program was designed to reduce annual expenses by an unspecified amount. Employees were given a Nov. 14 deadline to accept the package. 9/30/03 Ford Motor Co. is planning to eliminate a total of about 12,000 jobs world-wide, while DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler unit is readying its own plans to cut several thousand jobs in the latest fallout from the intense competitive pressure on Detroit's auto makers. 9/29/03 Celeritek Inc. plans to reduce its staff by 20% as it exits the wireless-handset power-amplifier business to focus on developing subsystems and semiconductors for the defense and communications markets. Company officials weren't available to disclose the number of employees affected by the layoffs. 9/29/03 Cancer-testing and analysis company Impath Inc. has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection from its creditors. Earlier this month, Impath said the Securities and Exchange Commission had made its inquiry into the company's accounting a formal investigation. In its filing Sunday with a Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan, New York, Impath listed assets of roughly $192.9 million and debts of about $127.3 million as of July 31. 9/25/03 IBM's software group has eliminated a small number of jobs in the United States. The group laid off about 380 employees this week as part of what it says is a regular reviews process. The layoffs, which include some marketing and administrative personnel, affect about 1 percent of IBM Software Group, whose roster of employees numbers about 38,000. 9/25/03 Levi Strauss & Co. said it would cut 1,980 more jobs and shutter its remaining North American manufacturing plants, as it struggles to complete a turnaround without defaulting on its large debt load. Including job cuts announced two weeks ago, Levi will be eliminating 21% of its work force. 9/22/03 John H. Harland Co., a printing and software company, said it will close five plants and eliminate about 500 jobs due to lower work volume and productivity improvements from digital printing technology.

Dot Com News from Week of September 1, 2003

9/18/03 Time Warner's board voted to drop AOL from the company name, as talks between its execs and rival media giant Bertelsmann over a music merger continued to falter. As expected, the world's biggest media company will go back to being called Time Warner in hopes of distancing itself from its failed merger with America Online. 9/18/03 Sun Microsystems Inc., in its latest round of cost cuts, said it is trimming as many as 900 jobs, or 3% of its global work force. 9/17/03 Cigarette company R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Holdings Inc. said it would reduce its work force by 40 percent to cut costs as it combats competition from low-cost brands, sending its shares up over 11 percent in early trading. R.J. Reynolds said it would take a $340 million charge in the third quarter for the move, which will eliminate about 2,600 jobs. 9/17/03 Corvis will cut 14% of its work force in a restructuring effort the optical networking company said will save it $30 million to $40 million annually. The restructuring will cut about 200 jobs by the end of the year, taking the company's staff to about 1,200. 9/16/03 Grande Communications Inc., the San Marcos-based company offering phone and cable service in San Antonio, laid off 40 people, about 5 percent of its work force. Officials said the cuts are to make the company, which now employs almost 700, more competitive in the slow economy and aren't an indication of poor financial condition. 9/16/03 Toshiba Corp. warned it would post a deeper first-half loss than expected and cut its full-year earnings outlook, with the Japanese electronics company saying its personal-computer operations have been battered by global price competition. Toshiba President Tadashi Okamura tried to put a positive spin on Toshiba's outlook, calling the troubles in its PC division "a temporary problem" that it will fix by cutting costs, reducing staff and adopting a new sales strategy. 9/15/03 Sprint Corp. said it will use outside contractors to handle some software operations, a move the telephone company said will result in hundreds of layoffs. 9/11/03 As part of its third-quarter earnings report, Novell announced that it has cut 10 percent of its work force in an effort to turn a profit in the fourth quarter. Novell cut most of the 600 positions during the third quarter, bringing its global work force to 5,700 at the end of the quarter. The company is hoping to save roughly $100 million in operating expenses. 9/10/03 With UNE-P rules largely unchanged, SBC Communications Inc. will likely continue cutting jobs and reducing capital expenditures, said Chief Executive Ed Whitacare. "I don't see lots of opportunity out there ... not much chance for improvement based on the triannual review," said Whitacre. Whitacre was not specific about the "magnitude" of job cuts or how much capex could decline. 9/10/03 3Com Corp. said it will outsource all of its manufacturing operations, closing its Dublin, Ireland, plant and eliminating about 1,000 jobs world-wide. The company said it will begin sending out notice to staff targeted for cuts, subject to legal review in the countries where the cuts occur. 9/9/03 Gateway Inc. said it's eliminating about 850 jobs in the computer maker's latest round of job cuts. According to a spokesman for the Poway, Calif., company, 650 jobs are being eliminated at the Sioux Falls, S.D., plant and an additional 100 workers will be laid off from North Sioux City, S.D. An additional 100 employees will be cut from the company's operations in Kansas City, Kan. In addition to those 850 job cuts over the next two months, the company announced last week it will close its Hampton, Va., plant and lay off 450 people there. 9/9/03 The cooling refinancing boom is claiming its first casualties: employees of the nation's big mortgage lenders. Countrywide Financial Corp., the nation's largest independent mortgage lender, said it has shed 500 jobs since July, while online lender E*Trade Mortgage last week let go 163 telephone-service representatives. 9/3/03 Gateway Inc. is preparing major new cutbacks as part of a sharp embrace of third-party suppliers for personal-computer assembly, product distribution and logistics. The changes, part of a plan to return the PC maker to profitability after three years of losses, include plans to outsource its assembly, manufacturing support and parts distribution at Gateway facilities in North Sioux City and Sioux Falls, S.D. and Hampton, Va. People familiar with the situation say more than 1,100 employees are expected to be dismissed by Oct. 30. Gateway employed about 8,700 employees at the end of June.

Dot Com News from Week of August 18, 2003

8/28/03 Global Crossing plans to cut 100 customer service jobs at its Westminster, Colo. conferencing business and vacate the massive complex there by year-end. 8/28/03 Sears, Roebuck & Co. plans to close three underperforming Great Indoors stores, convert a fourth of the home-decorating stores to an outlet format and take $75 million to $100 million in related charges. 8/27/03 Silicon Graphics has cut 600 jobs, which combined with 400 cuts in May means about one in four employees of the high-end computing specialist has been laid off this year in an attempt to reduce expenses. 8/25/03 Electronic Data Systems Corp. might cut additional jobs beyond the 2% work-force reduction it announced in June. In a regulatory filing, the computer-services firm said "we may reduce our work force by more than 2% in connection with our ongoing transformation efforts or otherwise." The "transformation" refers to EDS's recent effort to focus more on its core outsourcing business, while shedding noncore assets. EDS has about 138,000 employees. 8/22/03 Shares of Kenilworth-based Schering-Plough dropped about 10% on Friday, to a seven-year low, after the embattled drug maker announced a major restructuring, saying it would cut 1,000 jobs, eliminate bonuses and reduce dividends to save money. Schering-Plough said that earnings for the rest of 2003 and next year would likely fall. Schering-Plough's profits have plummeted because its former blockbuster allergy drug Claritin switched to an over-the-counter late last year. Additionally, the company agreed to pay a $500 million fine to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to settle allegations of widespread manufacturing deficiencies at four plants. 8/21/03 A spokesman for FirstEnergy Corp., the Ohio utility that's been eyed as a possible source of last week's blackout, confirmed that the company plans to significantly reduce IT staffing levels. The spokesman says FirstEnergy will lay off 185 to 230 IT staffers over the next several weeks. The company employs just over 1,000 IT workers. The layoffs are because of the completion of a major SAP implementation at the company and staff redundancies created by FirstEnergy's $4.5 billion merger with GPU Inc. in 2001, the spokesman says. 8/21/03 Embattled telecom giant MCI will lay off about 2,400 workers in the next three months as the company's battle to stay alive gets tougher each day. The first round of layoffs will be announced on Aug. 29, with subsequent layoffs announced in September and October. 8/18/03 International Business Machines Corp. laid off 600 workers nationwide, including about 500 at its Vermont plant. IBM said an additional 3,000 workers in Vermont will be required to take a week off without pay next month. The cuts also include about three dozen workers at a factory in Endicott, N.Y., and a handful more at plants in Rochester, Minn.; Austin, Texas; and Raleigh, N.C. While IBM posted a profitable second quarter, it reported a loss in its microelectronics business as the industry suffered a sharp downturn. Many of those laid off in Vermont were in higher-paying positions, the computer maker said. IBM had more than 315,000 employees world-wide at the end of 2002, with 6,000 in Vermont. 8/18/03 An affiliate of Sprint Corp.'s (PCS) PCS Group, Horizon PCS Inc., filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection along with two subsidiaries. Horizon disclosed that its independent auditor, KPMG LLP, had expressed substantial doubt about Horizon's ability to continue as a going concern. KPMG cited Horizon's continued losses from operations and a stockholders deficit as reasons for the going concern determination.

Dot Com News from Week of August 11, 2003

8/12/03 Charles Schwab Corp. said it expects to take restructuring charges of $35 million to $50 million in the second half of 2003 to account for reducing its staff by 250 workers and consolidating some facilities. 8/11/03 BellSouth Corp. may save as much as $275 million in IT costs over five years as the result of a plan to move its application development and maintenance work offshore. This equates to 600-900 positions over the next four years. India was chosen because it offers low-cost, high-quality work, a stable infrastructure with redundant communications links built to international standards, and a pro-U.S. business environment. 8/8/03 With its North American business continuing to slump, BASF will launch another round of layoffs that will further deplete the ranks at the regional headquarters. The chemical giant in Germay said it would pare $100 million from its annual overhead budget, eliminating 1,000 of the 3,000 positions in areas such as finance, law, huan resources and computer systems. BASF has a total of 12,000 in North America. 8/8/03 Exelon Corp., the parent of Peco Energy Co., said yesterday it will eliminate 1,900 jobs, or 10 percent of its workforce, by 2006. It disclosed the planned cuts -- most of which will occur by the end of this year -- as it updated investors and analysts on the progress of its melding of Commonwealth Edison and Peco. 8/1/03 Roughly three years after its initial public stock offering more than tripled in price to $90, StorageNetworks said that it plans to liquidate the company. The ailing maker of storage management software also said in a statement that it had let go of all remaining employees "with the exception of a small transition team that will oversee the wind down of the business," and that CEO Paul Flanagan is stepping down from his post. 8/1/03 Tellabs Inc. will outsource manufacturing of its North American products to Sanmina-SCI Corp. and cut 325 employees as a result. Tellabs will also record charges of about $90 million to $110 million for the outsourcing in the third quarter. 7/31/03 Comcast Corp., the No. 1 U.S. cable company, said it has laid off an extra 2,000 employees, on top of the 5,000 job cuts it announced three months ago. The layoffs are part of an effort to slash costs in the wake of last year's purchase of AT&T Broadband 7/29/03 Siemens AG will cut 2,300 jobs at its mobile-communications division as the unit struggles to recover from a market slump during the last three years that has afflicted telecommunications-equipment makers world-wide. 7/29/03 PILLOWTEX FILED for bankruptcy-court protection, saying it will close its 16 plants and sell off its assets. The move by the maker of Cannon and Fieldcrest towels and sheets cost thousands of textile workers their jobs and is likely to stir the debate over imports hitting U.S. manufacturers. Pillowtex said it would terminate approximately 6,450 positions, leaving 1,200 workers in distribution and to help administer the company during bankruptcy proceedings. 7/29/03 Verizon said its core local phone business - the heart of its unionized operations - continued to shrink. Revenue there dropped 3.4 percent as total lines in service fell by 3.7 percent because of growing wireless and Internet competition. Verizon said it will have to cut as many as 5,000 of its nearly 230,000 jobs this year through attrition, early retirement, and some managerial layoffs. 7/28/03 BMC Software Inc. posted a loss for its fiscal first quarter and announced plans to lay off 13% of its work force, or about 900 people. The Houston company, which has struggled with slack demand for its business software, has undergone several rounds of layoffs in recent years. In the fiscal year ended March 31, it cut 1,260 jobs. It currently has about 6,800 workers.

Dot Com News from Week of July 21, 2003

7/25/03 Avaya, a maker of business communications equipment, reported its first profit in two years yesterday and said it was finally seeing a halt to declining sales. The company posted net income of $8 million, or 2 cents per share, in its third fiscal quarter. The consensus estimate on Wall Street was for zero earnings. The company had a loss a year ago of $39 million, or 11 cents. But to play it safe, the Basking Ridge-based company said it plans to cut as many as 500 middle-management jobs and offer early retirement to some of its union workers in August. 7/24/03 Sony Corp. unveiled weak earnings results for the April-June quarter, as the company's sales and profit continued to be hit by price cuts and slumping demand for major products. Sony will start restructuring its electronics division in earnest -- including layoffs and trimming product lines -- starting at the October-December quarter, and will announce details by the end of October. 7/24/03 AT&T Corp. has already completed about two-thirds of its previously announced employee cuts for the year and has reduced the number of senior managers by about 30%. By the end of the year, cuts will reduce employee numbers by about 9% - more than previously expected. 7/23/03 Eastman Kodak Co. reported a 61% drop in net income and said it would have to lay off as many as 6,000 workers to cut costs amid a faster-than-expected switch by consumers to digital photography. 7/22/03 Siebel Systems Inc., seeking to increase profits in the face of continued weakness in information-technology spending, said it would reduce its work force by about 10%, consolidate product lines and move some operations offshore. Siebel plans to reduce its work force by 490 employees, to about 5,000 workers, down from about 8,300 employees as recently as early 2001. 7/22/03 Flextronics International Ltd. will cut 367 jobs in September as it consolidates manufacturing operations in Memphis, Tenn., according to a letter the electronics maker sent state officials. The company informed employees July 9 about the move, but at the time wouldn't disclose how many workers would be affected. Flextronics, which employs about 95,000 people in 29 countries, makes equipment for clients that include Hewlett-Packard Co., Palm Inc. and Ericsson.

Dot Com News from Week of July 14, 2003

7/16/03 XO Communications Inc. plans to shut down some of its offices and lay off 500 people, or about 10 percent of its workforce, by the end of the year as it tries to consolidate its operations. At the same time, XO plans to hire 300 more people to work in sales by late August throughout its organization. The cuts will come from other divisions such as finance, marketing and human resources. 7/15/03 Com21, Inc. announced that the Company has voluntarily filed for protection under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of California. Since its founding in 1992, Com21, Inc. became a global supplier of system solutions for the broadband access market. The company's DOCSIS, EuroDOCSIS, and ATM-based products have enabled cable operators and service providers to deliver high-speed, cost-effective Internet, telephony, and video applications to corporate telecommuters, small businesses, home offices, and residential users. 7/15/03 America Online said it has laid off 50 employees involved in Web browser development at its Netscape subsidiary amid a reorganization of its Mozilla open-source browser team. The move affects less than 10 percent of Netscape employees, according to an AOL representative, who added that the company plans to continue to support current versions of the Netscape browser and the Netscape Web portal. 7/15/03 Loral Space & Communications Ltd., faltering under a heavy debt load and unable to land new satellite-manufacturing contracts amid industry overcapacity and worries about its long-term survival, filed for bankruptcy-court protection from creditors. 7/15/03 Lucent Technologies Inc., surprised by the continued weakness in telecommunications-equipment sales, retreated from a prediction it would turn profitable by the end of September. Analysts said the continuing weakness all but ensures Lucent will have to cut more costs to reduce the revenue level at which it can turn a profit from the current $2.4 billion a quarter. 7/15/03 Verizon Communications Inc. is rehiring additional laid-off workers in the Northeast, following last week's order by a New York arbitrator to take back 2,300 employees in that state who were improperly terminated. 7/14/03 Powerwave said it had laid off more than 600 employees at its Santa Ana headquarters, the bulk of them manufacturing workers. Now that Powerwave has cut its costs, the company predicts that its earnings will improve after a tough second quarter. Sales fell more than 50 percent from a year earlier to $51.5 million and it reported a loss of $15.2 million.

Dot Com News from Week of July 7, 2003

7/8/03 PG&E Corp. sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy-court protection for its wholesale energy unit, PG&E National Energy Group, and certain other subsidiaries, essentially walking away from a $3 billion investment made during the past five years. Perhaps no company has fared as poorly as PG&E as a result of a turbulent shift to competitive electricity markets. Both of its principal units are under bankruptcy protection, having lost billions of dollars as "first movers" in liberalized markets. The company's big utility unit, Pacific Gas & Electric, filed for bankruptcy-court protection two years ago in the thick of California's energy crisis. 7/7/03 Redback Networks Inc. said it will likely file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection with a prepackaged reorganization plan if it is unable to garner adequate approval of a debt-for-equity deal from a group of its noteholders and its common shareholders. 7/7/03 Start-up Cambridge Display Technology is trimming its work force as it searches for partnerships and additional funding to help it continue its efforts in screen technology. The Cambridge, England-based company, a proponent of organic light-emitting diode (OLED) screen technology, said it will close two of its manufacturing facilities, which will result in the loss of up to 30 jobs, or about 20 percent of its work force.

Dot Com News from Week of June 30, 2003

7/2/03 Struggling with an industrywide glut of medical products derived from blood plasma, Baxter International Inc. said it planned to cut 5% of its work force and slashed its full-year earnings projections for the second time this year. 7/1/03 A cost-cutting program at AT&T Wireless Services Inc. will eliminate about 1,000 jobs this year, or about 3% of the company's total. Those cuts follow a net reduction in the company's work force of about 2,000 last year. 7/1/03 AMR Corp.'s American Airlines unit said it is nearing decisions on shrinking or even closing airport facilities, reservations centers and maintenance bases, effectively putting on notice any communities offering incentives to keep jobs. American, the world's largest airline, escaped a bankruptcy-court filing in April when employees agreed to $1.8 billion of wage cuts and productivity changes. The Fort Worth, Texas, carrier has continued putting those cost-savings in place, including furloughing more than 3,000 flight attendants.

Dot Com News from Week of June 21, 2003

6/27/03 Charlotte-based Saber Cargo Airlines has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and closed down, victim of the economic slowdown and an ambitious aircraft purchase. The carrier, which specialized in overnight parts deliveries for the auto industry, filed June 18 under Chapter 7 of the bankruptcy code, which typically leads to liquidation. Its filing listed assets of $1.1 million and liabilities of $4.6 million. 6/27/03 Struggling software maker Corel on Friday reported another quarterly loss and announced plans to lay off 66 workers--about 9 percent of its already thinned staff. 6/26/03 State Street Corp. is laying off about 150 employees, even though approximately 3,000 -- well more than the estimated 1,800 positions the company targeted for elimination -- have volunteered to take a generous severance package. 6/24/03 Sony Ericsson unveiled plans to streamline its operations, saying it would reduce its presence in North America and shed around 500 jobs, or 12% of its staff. 6/22/03 Amerco Inc., whose orange and white U-Haul trucks and trailers have plied U.S. highways since the 1940s, Friday filed for bankruptcy-court protection to speed the restructuring of its debt. 6/20/03 The former Spanish incumbent Telefonica SA plans to axe 4,500 jobs in its domestic business, 11% of the unit's workforce. According to reports, Telefonica has met with Union officials and told them it plans to seek regulatory approval for the lay-offs. The 4,500 positions will be lost through early retirements over the next two years. However, this figure could increase to 10,000 positions according to some union officials, and some Spanish newspapers have published unattributed reports that the figure could even rise to 14,000 jobs during the next three years. 6/19/03 Metro-Optix Inc. has said it will cease operations today after failing to convince its investors that it could secure a Tier 1 carrier customer or a strategic partnership with a larger vendor. Metro-Optix started as a spinoff of LM Ericsson in 1999. The company is in the process of letting go its employees in two foreign countries -- about 30 in India and about 114 in Texas. 6/19/03 Software provider Openwave Systems Inc. plans another round of job cuts in the second half of the year in order to reduce costs, this time a 12% staff reduction that affects about 180 people. 6/19/03 Boeing Co. is seeking additional financial assistance from the Pentagon and is considering laying off more workers after concluding that the commercial-space market won't rebound in the foreseeable future. Several hundred more jobs may be eliminated at the company's El Segundo, Calif., satellite-assembly plant by year end if no new orders are won. Boeing previously had announced it was eliminating 4,100 jobs in its satellite-making unit. By year end, the company plans to employ about 5,000 in the unit. Employment stood at about 10,000 two years ago. 6/19/03 Touch America Holdings Inc., which suffered a string of financial setbacks and a massive loss in stock value since its conversion from energy concern Montana Power Co., filed for federal bankruptcy-court protection in Delaware. The filing comes just one day after Touch America laid off 216 employees, leaving it with a work force of 162. 6/18/03 Computer-services company Electronic Data Systems Corp., hoping to halt a deep slide in its outsourcing business, plans new job cuts and additional asset sales and will take as much as $475 million in write-offs and expenses. The Plano, Texas, company said it would cut 2,700 jobs in addition to the nearly 5,000 workers dismissed late last year. Many of the new cuts would come from European operations, and the expenses include another round of write-downs of unprofitable contracts. 6/17/03 Read-Rite Corp. filed a voluntary petition for relief under Chapter 7 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. The company, which supplies magnetic recording heads for hard drives and tape drives, said it had exhausted all alternatives to preserve shareholder value and to fulfill obligations to creditors and employees. Read-Rite employs about 1,000 people although it furloughed 60% of its U.S. workforce in December. 6/17/03 NextCard Inc. abandoned plans to reorganize as a going concern and set out details of a plan to liquidate. According to documents obtained by Dow Jones Newswires, the online credit card company filed liquidation plans with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., under which it would pay out $2.5 million to $17 million to creditors. 6/17/03 Engage Inc., Andover, Mass., said it is insolvent and will file for bankruptcy protection. Engage said it is in talks to financially restructure the company, but warned that its stockholders most likely wouldn't recover their investments. The advertising and promotional software maker said it, along with several of its U.S. units, will file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Dot Com News from Week of June 9, 2003

6/13/03 BellSouth, with its revenues and profits under pressure, said it will eliminate 595 jobs in nine states. 6/12/03 3Com Corp. will cut about 10% of its global work force over the next two fiscal quarters now that it has completed the sale of its CommWorks telecommunications-equipment unit, the Santa Clara, Calif. Most job cuts will be in the U.S., Europe, Middle East and Africa regions, with the greatest number of U.S. job cuts taking place in the company's Santa Clara, Calif., location. 6/10/03 General Motors Corp. said it would lay off half of the 260 employees at its operations in Japan this year, amid a long slump in the U.S. auto giant's sales in the country. The job cuts are part of an effort by GM to slash costs after sales of its vehicles in Japan fell by half during the first four months of this year, compared with the same period last year. 6/10/03 Sprint Corp. announced that it plans to wind down its Web-hosting operations, resulting in 500 job cuts and pretax charges of $400 million to $475 million.

Dot Com News from Week of June 2, 2003

6/8/03 The unemployment rate rose last month to 6.1%, the highest level since July 1994. Total payrolls fell, making May the fourth-straight month with no job growth. 6/6/03 Ipo.com, one of the most popular Web pages for new-issues investors, shut down Friday. The site, which listed information for initial public offerings, secondary stock sales, and venture capital transactions, had been in operation for just over six years. In a message on the site (www.ipo.com), David Roberts, who co-founded the site with Brad Sinrod, didn't give a reason for closing the site, saying only that he was "privileged to serve the Internet, financial, and venture communities over the past years." 6/2/03 Cable & Wireless PLC is expected to announce a further scaling back of its operations in the U.S. and Europe, as the British telephone company tries to stanch the losses in its biggest division. New Chief Executive Francesco Caio is expected to announce a plan to slim down the company's Global unit, which hosts Web sites and transports Internet traffic for large companies, by cost cutting in the United Kingdom and mounting a further withdrawal from the U.S.

Dot Com News from Week of May 26, 2003

5/30/03 Online music service MusicNet, owned by RealNetworks and three major music labels, has laid off about 30 people in its Seattle office. RealNetworks is phasing out MusicNet from its digital media Web service and replacing it with its newly acquired Rhapsody music service. 5/28/03 The 3DO Company, a Delaware corporation, and The 3DO Company, a California corporation and wholly-owned subsidiary of the Company, today announced that they have filed voluntary petitions for relief under Chapter 11. The 3DO Company develops, publishes and distributes interactive entertainment software for personal computers, the Internet, and advanced entertainment systems such as the PlayStation(R) computer entertainment system, the Xbox(TM) video game system from Microsoft, and the Nintendo GameCube(TM) and Game Boy(R) Advance systems. 5/27/03 Spiegel, Inc. announced intentions to close approximately 60 of its Eddie Bauer stores. The Company has already begun store-closing sales at most locations.

Dot Com News from Week of May 19, 2003

5/23/03 The Walt Disney Co. may soon be getting out of the retail business, confirming that it is considering selling its Disney Stores. After enjoying success for a decade following its 1987 debut, the chain has struggled for several years. It shrunk from 522 domestic stores in its late 1990s heyday to 387 in North America and 160 locations abroad. 5/22/03 Vulcan, the private real-estate and investment firm led by billionaire Paul Allen, said it slashed about 100 jobs this week, citing the Northwest's poor economic outlook and a need to halt some internal technology projects. The cuts, Vulcan's first mass layoffs, involve about one-fifth of the staff, leaving the company with more than 400 employees. 5/22/03 Computer maker Silicon Graphics Inc. said it would cut 400 jobs, or about 10 percent of its work force, in a bid to speed its return to profitability amid a harsh climate for technology spending. 5/22/03 International Business Machines Corp. sent layoff notices to 65 employees in its services unit. The affected workers were at several sites across the U.S. The layoffs were attributed to a "skills rebalancing." The IBM Global Services unit has about 180,000 employees; IBM has a total of about 315,000 workers. It was the latest in a series of job cuts at the company, which has performed relatively well amid the technology sector downturn. IBM laid off 300 workers earlier this month in various U.S. facilities, including a printer division in Colorado. Also, the company cut fewer than 1,000 employees in its software and services units in February. 5/21/03 National Semiconductor Corp. plans to shutter its cellular-baseband business and to cut another 340 jobs, or 4% of its staff. National Semiconductor should have about 9,200 employees after completing the job cuts related to the unit closing and the 500 cuts announced in the third quarter. 5/20/03 Although no major layoffs have been announced this year, employment numbers at Lucent Technologies' Columbus operations continue to dwindle. About 160 workers have either been laid off or retired since the beginning of the year -- and more layoffs are possible. This comes after nearly 4,000 people lost their jobs during the previous three years. 5/20/03 Hewlett-Packard plans to eliminate thousands more jobs over the next six months. The company has already axed 16,600 jobs in the past year, out of the 17,900 custs planned after its May 2002 acquisition of Compaq Computer. In addition to the remaining merger-related cuts, HP said it trimmed 2,300 additional jobs last quarter and plans to chop 3,500 more by October--including 1,200 in its high-end computing business. At the same time, it intends to add 4,000 jobs related to recent outsourcing wins and is giving raises to its employees for the first time in two years. 5/20/03 Credence Systems is cutting another 173 jobs as it continues to cut costs amid a slump in spending on its semiconductor-testing gear. The layoffs follow a similar move last year and come after eight consecutive quarters of losses. The company's sales, after peaking in 2000 at $757 million, fell by more than half in 2001, then by nearly half again in 2002. 5/20/03 As many as 350 Verizon Communications employees in New England who are members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union may be facing layoffs on June 28. About 650 IBEW members across New England had agreed to take early-retirement incentives as of yesterday, out of 1,000 union jobs Verizon has formally termed ''surplus'' as a first step toward possible layoffs under collective bargaining agreements, company and union officials said.

Dot Com News from Week of May 12, 2003

5/15/03 American Airlines will lay off 3,123 flight attendants beginning July 1 -- a result of cost-cutting moves and recent labor concession talks. 5/14/03 A company that provides telephone technical support for Microsoft Corp. plans to lay off 350 workers by the end of September as the software giant ends a contract. Software Spectrum has provided a call center for Microsoft since 1998. Software Spectrum is a subsidiary of Level 3 Communications 5/14/03 Allegiance Telecom Inc., once considered a prime candidate to survive the telecommunications-industry shakeout, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy-court protection. Unable to devise a way to restructure $1.2 billion of debt outside court, the Dallas competitive local exchange carrier, or CLEC, sought protection from its creditors in federal bankruptcy court in Manhattan. It owes $465 million to its lenders, $650 million to unsecured bondholders, and about $100 million on leases of fiber-optic lines. 5/13/03 Schering-Plough Corp. went into free fall in the first quarter as profit plummeted 71% and sales of key drugs declined across the board. In a message to employees, new Chief Executive Mr. Hassan said Schering-Plough "must move swiftly and effectively to improve our sales and earnings performance, both of which have declined dramatically versus the prior year." He said he will sharply reduce hiring and possibly cut jobs as well, if overstaffing is found in lower-priority areas. 5/13/03 PG&E Corp., whose big California utility unit is operating under bankruptcy-court protection, reported a loss for the first quarter and warned that it plans also to file for bankruptcy protection for its unregulated energy business.

Dot Com News from Week of May 5, 2003

5/8/03 Internet advertising provider Overture said it would cut about 10 percent of its workforce to integrate units it has purchased and repeated its forecast that 2004 earnings would double from the current year. Most of the 100 job cuts will be in sales and finance, as the two new units are integrated. Headcount currently totals about 1,000. 5/7/03 Gateway laid off 43 part-time employees this week in its Kansas City, Mo., technical support call center, part of a broader cost-cutting effort at the company. The workload carried by the employees, who each worked less than 20 hours per week, will be taken up by Gateway's remaining tech support staff, located in various U.S. locations. 5/6/03 ICG Communications, a fiber optic network operator that emerged from bankruptcy protection in October, will lay off as much as 20 percent of its work force to cope with a drop in prices for its services. The company, which is based in Englewood, Colo., and employs 1,156 people, said yesterday that the cuts would occur by June 30. ICG's prices have been falling because of excess capacity and slumping demand from Internet service providers and telephone carriers. 5/6/03 The FBI is opening three to five investigations a month of suspected fraud of $100 million or more by executives at publicly traded companies, a pace that indicates the scandals that have rocked corporate America for the past 18 months show no signs of abating. The FBI is actively involved in about 100 cases of suspected fraud at companies, about 10 times the caseload before the alleged fraud at Enron Corp. erupted into public view in late 2001. 5/6/03 Acterna Corp., a maker of communications testing equipment, on Tuesday said it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy court protection because of the prolonged downturn across the telecommunications industry and it arranged debtor-in-possession financing of $30 million. 5/5/03 Air Canada will cut 400 management and nonunion workers this week, and another 400 workers will be let go in the next two months, as the airline restructures under bankruptcy protection. 5/5/03 Sprint Corp. announced Monday it will lay off 575 employees in the next few weeks. The telecom, which has eliminated more than 17,000 jobs since October 2001, said the latest job cuts were caused by increased competition and "lowered business volume."

Dot Com News from Week of April 28, 2003

5/2/03 The unemployment rate rose to 6% in April from 5.8% as the economy continued to struggle. Employers reduced payrolls for the third straight month, cutting 48,000 jobs after slashing 124,000 in March. 5/1/03 Magic Lantern Group, Inc. announced that it has temporarily reduced its workforce by 13 positions, representing 25% of its staff. The action reflects the company's ongoing efforts to decrease its expenditures and sharpen the focus of its resources on activities to increase revenue. 5/1/03 GiantLoop Network Inc. said it canceled a major software development effort because of a lack of demand from customers and laid off staff involved in the work. Current and former employees say GiantLoop now has around 50 workers, down from roughly 100 last week and fewer than its peak of more than 300 several years ago. 5/1/03 Bethlehem Steel Corp. announced that today was the last day of work for more than 400 of its salaried employees. The eliminated positions were for employees from the Company's production facilities and its corporate headquarters. 4/30/03 Seven thousand more jobs will be eliminated at L. M. Ericsson, half of them in Sweden, as the new chief executive tries to make the company small enough to earn profits again in the slumping mobile telephone business. By the end of 2004, Ericsson expects to employ just 47,000 people. At its peak, the company had about 100,000 employees. 4/29/03 JDS Uniphase Inc.'s revenue plunged 37% from the year earlier, although its loss was narrower than expected. The company announced plans for further job cuts as it continues to cope with a challenging economic environment. JDS Uniphase ended the quarter with 6,400 workers, down from 7,000 employees at the end of the second quarter and well below its peak of 29,000 in early 2001. 4/29/03 Infineon Technologies AG said it would cut as many as 900 jobs, or almost 3% of its work force, over the next few months as the German computer-chip maker tries to lower costs amid continuing weakness in the semiconductor market. Infineon, Europe's second-largest semiconductor maker, said it would shed 500 positions in administration and 150 jobs in the its mobile-phone parts division, mostly in Sweden. Outsourcing and consolidating some other operations would eliminate 250 more jobs. 4/29/03 Best Software, the maker of ACT, Peachtree and Saleslogix business applications, is reorganizing itself in a drive to grow sales and streamline its operations. As part of the move, the company has regrouped six divisions into two. The company, which employs 2,100 people, also cut about 60 jobs to reduce redundant positions. 4/28/03 Getronics will lay off at least 4% of its work force and close offices in an effort by the Dutch IT-services company to cut cost. Its shares soared 21%.

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