Dell offers assurance over Irish workforce

Dell and EMC's Irish workforce look set to continue to play a significant role in both companies' future, with founder Michael Dell quashing suggestions that there would be mass job cuts if the $67 billion merger went through.

There had been reports that about 6,000 employees of both firms faced uncertainty over their jobs in the wake of the news of the proposed deal, which must still be approved by EMC shareholders and regulators.

“This combination is much more about revenue synergies than cost synergies,” explained Michael Dell. “There are some cost synergies, I’m not going to deny that’s the case. But we think the revenue synergies are three times larger than cost synergies.

“If you combine two companies that do very much the same thing, you can be sure that what they’re going to do is take a lot of cost out by doing it one time, and these two companies do a lot of things that are very complementary.”

Dell employs about 2,500 people in Ireland, with EMC employing a similar amount, and VMWare having about 700 staff here.

"What you see in any normal company is that you have these hubs of innovation and talent. For a long time Ireland has been home to Dell, it's also been home to EMC in Cork and VMware, we're excited to enhance our presence in Ireland," Mr Dell said.

The acquisition, which will be the largest technology merger in history if it goes to plan, is expected to complete in the second half of 2016.