Sybase Corp has laid off up to 35 staff across its European operations as a follow on to last July’s corporate decision to effectively run the company worldwide from the US. That particular Night of the Long Knives resulted in the departure of a layer of UK and European management, including UK managing director Malcolm Neill; VP of European marketing and distribution, John Stevens; VP of international operations John Louth, and business development manager John Rodford. Now around 15 UK and 20 French and German Sybase staff have gone to sleep with the fishes, though UK director of sales and marketing Vincent De Gennaro refused to confirm figures: There’s been a little bit of streamlining and rationalisation, is all he would say. The cuts are down to needless duplication on a country level, adds De Gennaro, such as the existence of two separate finance and administration departments and two ways of handling second level support. Dave Peterschmidt, general manager for worldwide field operations, now oversees all Sybase’s sales and support worldwide from Emeryville, California.
