Citigroup Plans to cut 17,000 Jobs, Revamp IT

Citigroup, a New York-headquartered financial services company, has announced its plans to cut about 17,000 jobs and revamp its entire IT operations. The move is in line with the company’s restructuring plan aimed at achieving cost savings of over USD 10 billion by 2009. About 8 percent of the group’s employees will be affected by the company’s plans of restructuring its operations.

In order to modernize the group’s IT operations, various activities, such as consolidating its data centers, standardizing application development, and modernization of voice and data networks will be performed for its operations across the world. In addition, the company plans to offshore/outsource part of its back-office operations affecting about 9,500 employees to low-cost destinations. The company is also considering increasing the usage of shared legal, human resources, risk management, financial operations, and back-office functions and plans to centralize its entire purchase functions by 2009.

According to Guillermo Kopp, an analyst at US-based research and consulting firm TowerGroup, the group is cutting large number of jobs from non-growth areas and aims to retain employees from high growth areas including global wealth management in the US and corporate banking in Europe.


source: globalservicesnow