Honeywell Bull Inc is starting the new year with a major cost cutting exercise in the US, saying that it wants to shed 1,600 of its 8,900 employees or about 15% of the US workforce. In recognition of the fact that more and more of the firm’s big mainframes will come from 15% shareholder NEC Corp in Japan, Honeywell Bull wants to cut its research and development spending to about 10.5% of the annual $2,200m turnover from the present 11.3% to bring it more in line with that of competitors. Moreover a major exercise is under way to harmonise the product line with that of 65% shareholder Groupe Bull SA of Paris, reducing the amount of separate development the two firms do on the DPS 6 minicomputer family. The cuts will be in manufacturing and administration, and not sales.
