Thomson Reuters Corp is to cut around 2,000 jobs worldwide, equating to around 4% of its workforce, as it takes steps to streamline its global business.
The restructuring will take place across 39 jurisdictions and will mainly affect the financial and risk business and the enterprise, technology and operations (ET&O) group, a global team of around 22,000 staff that was set up in January 2016. The ET&O group absorbed many of Thomson Reuters core operational functions including its technology function, operations centres, real estate and sourcing into a single enterprise team.
In its annual report for 2015 the information company said: “We believe that ET&O will provide us with a greater opportunity to accelerate our progress on scale and growth initiatives and will allow us to sharpen our focus on allocating resources to our growth priorities.”
Thomson Reuters will take a fourth-quarter charge of $200m to $250m to streamline its business.
Jim Smith, chief executive, said: “It’s about simplification and taking out bureaucracy and taking out layers all of which have added complexity and slowed us down.
“These actions are not driven by any reaction to market conditions or in any way coming on the back of under performance.”
Just over three and a half years ago, in February 2013, Thomson Reuters announced that it would cut 2,500 jobs to cut costs in its legal, financial and risk division. A further 3,000 job cuts were announced in October 2013.