GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Cisco, which has three Swiss offices, including one in Rolle in canton Vaud, was busy presenting its latest products at Cisco Live in Las Vegas, Nevada Wednesday 13 July while the business rumour mill was grinding out stories about expected layoffs that could be as high as 10,000, according to Bloomberg Monday, or between 5,000 and 7,000 according to the Wall St Journal Wednesday.
The California-based company employs more than 73,000 people worldwide and has annual revenues of $10.9 billion.
Chief executive office John Chambers appeared to give some credence to the rumours with a keynote speech at the Cisco Live event where he talked about a leaner company that will cut costs by about $1 billion during its next fiscal year, saying the company has become too complex. Cisco has been promising a reorganization that will get innovative products to market faster. The company has so far declined to comment on the number of jobs that will go, and Chambers said Wednesday that a final decision has not yet been made.
The job cuts are expected to be announced in August.
The accent on Wednesday was Cisco’s role in providing cloud-related products. The company is best known as a computer network equipment maker. Reuters, in a review of the new products presentation notes that the company is now the second provider of servers in the US, “behind only HP, commanding 19.7 percent of the market. While other business units are struggling to maintain, servers have grown into nearly a billion-dollar business in less than two years.”
Geneva's Mont Blanc McDonald's sports the new look
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The latest company to leave the UK and move to Switzerland is fast food giant McDonald’s, which will shift its European head office to Geneva later in 2009, the Tribune de Geneve reported late Friday. European president Denis Hennequin and a small team of possibly a dozen people will make the move. The Tribune says the company will be housed in the former offices of Bank Mirabaud on Boulevard du Théâtre, but the company has said only that details will be announced closer to the date of the move.
The UK’s Telegraph newspaper links the move to a change in the UK’s “taxation of foreign profits linked to intellectual property rights such as patents and trademarks” but it notes that the company stresses its tax rate will remain virtually unchanged.
