Telecoms equipment maker Marconi, facing calls for a boardroom purge after a humiliating profit warning this month, has launched a review of its operations and vowed to go "back to basics".
Chief executive Lord George Simpson, who is under fire after the warning halved the company's stock price, told an annual meeting of shareholders today that the review would focus on cutting costs, generating cash and identifying non-core operations.
Lord Simpson said the review would be complete within two months and that it would take "a fresh look at things we are doing on the periphery of the business that we no longer need to do".
Marconi's shares plunged after the company told investors that operating profits would slump 50 per cent this year because of an industry-wide downturn. The warning came just seven weeks after the group forecast an upturn in its markets.
Lord Simpson said Marconi would work hard to keep the confidence of its customers - the world's big telecoms companies - and assured them that Marconi was financially sound.
"Our customers today are delaying spend on expanding their networks, but our discussions with them lead us to believe that what we are seeing now is a deferral - not a long-term famine," he said.