Dot Com News from Week of August 20, 2001

• 8/26/01 - Japanese electronics giant Hitachi Ltd. is set to slash 20,000 jobs because of falling world-wide demand for semiconductors and other information-technology products.
• 8/24/01 - Mitsubishi Silicon America is laying off 180 people, or 15 percent of its Salem, Ore., work force, in a restructuring effort aimed at keeping the company competitive.
• 8/24/01 - Buy.com which forecasted a possible demise next month due to the loss of its credit card processor, will stay in business. SB Acquisition, owned by original founder Scott Blum, has agreed to buy the company back from shareholders for 17 cents per share, or a little over $23 million. The merger would also give Buy.com an additional $9 million to fund operations.
• 8/24/01 - Hughes Electronics Corp., a satellite television company, cut its workforce by 10% or roughly 800 jobs. Cuts will be felt across the board including its DirecTV unit.
• 8/23/01 - UK publisher IPC which is being purchased by AOL Time Warner, is closing three of its web sites, BEME.com, Uploaded.com and UnmissableTV.com. It will instead shift its focus to six other sites it owns to deliver financial returns and strengthen its magazine brands. 90 people would become redundant.
• 8/23/01 - Cooley Godward LLP, a law firm in Silicon Valley plans to lay off 86 associates and special counsel, 50 paralegals and staff across the board. These would be the first layoffs ever for the 81 year old company.
• 8/23/01 - Equant has decided to fire 3,000 of its 13,300 employees. The job cuts are expected to save Equant $100 million a year. France Telecom recently received approval to merge with Equant.
• 8/23/01 - Convera Corp. has cut 15% of its workforce as it suffered a second quarter net loss of $50.9 million. The company blames the net loss on costs due to its acquisition of Intel's Interactive Media Services unit last year. More layoffs are possible according to CEO Patrick Condo.
• 8/23/01 - Finnish telecommunications company Sonera, plans to eliminate 1,000 of its 11,000 employees blaming its own $4.5 billion debt. The debt is a result of purchasing a series of European third generation wireless licenses last year.
• 8/22/01 - Tellabs Inc., manufacturer of telecommunications equipment, plans to eliminate 12% of its workforce while closing its manufacturing plant in Drogheda, Ireland. The company affected by a slow telecom industry, said it will consolidate the the work from the plant in Drogheda into other plants in Shannon, Ireland and Espoo, Finland. The cuts would affect 950 people with 50 employees accepting an early retirement.
• 8/22/01 - Gateway, which is restructuring its operations and cutting costs, said it plans to shut operations in Britain and Ireland, eliminating more than 1,000 jobs.
• 8/22/01 - Auction service provider FairMarket laid off 38 employees, or 35 percent of its work force, in response to lowered revenue expectations. FairMarket, which developed auction sites for Microsoft and Dell Computer, laid off 35 workers in October and 40 workers in May. Concurrent with the May layoffs, FairMarket shut down its Australian office and Chief Executive Eileen Rudden resigned.
• 8/22/01 - Baltimore IT has now layed off 220 after announcing disappointing quarterly results and plans to sell its acquired e-mail security company, Content Technologies. These changes are aimed on saving the company 72 million British pounds or $103 million annually.
• 8/22/01 - Indya.com has cut 80 of its employees or about 35% of its staff after recently being purchased by Star TV. The layoffs predominantly affect technical staff and those in charge of design and content.
• 8/21/01 - Steelcase Inc. said it plans to cut 900 to 1,110 jobs because of a sluggish economy and a weak furniture market.
• 8/21/01 - Online music service Launch Media, recently purchased by Yahoo, cut 14 people to eliminate job duplication and forecasts another 36 job cuts before the year's end.
• 8/21/01 - Be Free, Inc., a leading provider of a marketing platform that allows online businesses to attract, convert and retain customers easily and cost effectively, announced continued restructuring and a 25 percent workforce reduction as part of its plan to reach profitability. The company will reduce its workforce to approximately 175 employees from 230.
• 8/21/01 - Hutchinson Technology Inc., maker of suspension assemblies for computer disk drives, said it would eliminate as many as 600 jobs, or 15% of its work force.
• 8/21/01 - NX Networks Inc., a company whose technology helps people make phone calls over the Internet, eliminated 38 jobs -- about 30% of its work force -- and closed its European offices in July. The job cuts in July followed the elimination of 40 positions in March and the closure of its California office in May. The company also warned for the second time in less than three months that it is running out of cash and may have to seek bankruptcy protection.
• 8/21/01 - More than 1,200 people will go as AOL Time Warner has decided to trim its AOL Internet unit. The cuts have been expected in its 16,000 strong unit and may see another 500 people go due to an alliance between Netscape and Sun Microsystems.
• 8/21/01 - Hewlett-Packard will begin cutting its staff at its Southeast Asian headquarters in Singapore in an attempt to improve the companies "cost-competitiveness" in the world market. The Singapore workforce currently employs 6,500 people.
• 8/21/01 - Buy.com may see its demise next month as its credit-card processor intends to stop processing transactions effective September 1. The company earns 90% of its revenue via credit card sales and if a new processor cannot be found, the company may not be able to continue.
• 8/20/01 - Engage, an interactive marketing and software company, laid off 100 workers and warned that 125 more jobs could be cut if it can't find a buyer for its online advertising business. The layoffs amounted to 19% of its work force.
• 8/20/01 - World Commerce Online, Inc. (WCO), a leading provider in web-enabled technology business solutions for the global perishable and consumer packaged goods industries, filed today for protection under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code. The Company has not attained sufficient cash flow from operations to fund the on-going business.
• 8/20/01 - Recording a loss for its fiscal first quarter, Korn/Ferry International said it will get rid of 500 employees or 20% of its workforce. The executive-search company will also cut its executive salaries by 10% and consolidate its operations.
• 8/20/01 - J.P. Morgan Chase now expects to cut as much as 8,000 employees or 8% of its total workforce according to internal sources from the company. The company experienced a 77% decline in second quarter profit which is cited as a main reason.
• 8/20/01 - Ames Deparment Stores Inc. has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection a week after announcing the closure of 47 stores. Blaming the economy, the company said its remaining stores will remain operational during the reorganization.
• 8/20/01 - Agilent Technologies, a spinoff of Hewlett-Packard, will cut 4,000 jobs or about 9% of its workforce in an effort to return to profitability. The company said this was in addition to other moves to save money including a temporary 10% pay cut.
• 8/20/01 - About 250 people at Baltimore IT are at risk of losing their jobs as the troubled IT security firm is expected to announce its next list of cuts. The restructuring is expected to save $7 million a year.
• 8/20/01 - After announcing that losses for the year to March 31, 2002 will be over $1.8 billion, Fujitsu will be cutting 16,400 positions or about 10 percent of its workforce over the coming months. 5,000 cuts will occur in Japan with the rest spread worldwide.
• 8/20/01 - Record label Sony Music has eliminated 50 positions from its North American workforce. The cuts affected mainly administrative positions.