Rolls-Royce to cut 2,300 jobs

Rolls-Royce Group PLC, a leading manufacturer of aircraft engines, said today that it intends to trim nearly 6 percent of employees from its payroll.
The company aims to cut up to 2,300 managerial, professional and clerical staff in Britain, the United States, Germany, the Nordic countries and elsewhere.

In Britain, it said it hoped to achieve staffing cuts by voluntary departures. The group will continue to recruit graduates, apprentices and those required directly to deliver growth," the company said in a statement to the London Stock Exchange.

The company said the staff cuts would help to mitigate factors such as increasing raw material costs and the weak U.S. dollar.

In July, Rolls-Royce reported net first-half profit of 306 million pounds $600 million, half that of the same period in 2006.

The company said then that the dollar's weakness had raised its costs by $78 million, and that costs of raw materials were also rising.

As of November, Rolls-Royce employed 39,500 people: 23,300 in the U.K., 8,300 in North America, 2,300 in Germany, 3,400 in the Nordic countries, nearly 700 in Asia and about 1,500 elsewhere.

Rolls-Royce has a 49 percent share of the wide-body commercial aircraft engine market and a 34 percent share of the business jet engine market. The company had annual sales of $14.5 billion in 2006. More at Detroit News