The consensus among observers has been that IBM Corp will find it needs to cut many more than the 25,000 positions it is targeting for this year, so there was little surprise when both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal yesterday came out with independent stories saying the cuts would go much higher. The surprise came when IBM immediately leaped up to deny the reports. The expectation we’re working toward at this point is 25,000, a spokesman told Reuter: We’ve not revised that. The Times said that the company planned to raise total number of lay-offs to 40,000 and the Journal said that IBM’s North American sales unit would increase lay-offs to 7,000 people from the previous target of 4,000 to 6,000. The company said it had never confirmed the lower figure. The original trigger for the stories was a note sent to clients by Merrill Lynch & Co analyst Daniel Mandresh, in which he said he believed that IBM plans to cut as many as 40,000 jobs this year, which would require yet another charge of about $1,000m to make up the provisions short-fall. The Journal hears that an announcement on the sales force will be made internally next Monday and will not be made public.
