The world's largest financial information provider, Reuters Group Plc, is set to shed a further 1,000 jobs as part of a new cost-cutting drive, the Sunday Timesnewspaper said, citing industry sources.
Chief Executive Mr Tom Glocer is expected to announce the plans with the group's full-year results next month, the paper said.
Reuters, which sells real-time financial news and data to bankers, brokers and fund managers world-wide, is suffering along with its customers from the worst bear market in 30 years. It has already shed more than 2,000 jobs, or about ten per cent of its core workforce, since mid-2001.
"2003 is going to be a bad year," the Sunday Timesquoted a person close to the firm as saying.
A Reuters spokesman described the report as speculative but declined to confirm or deny it. "We have not made any announcement and we don't intend to make any announcement on our plans until the results," he said.
Reuters shares fell 74 percent in 2002 to become the year's biggest decliner in the FTSE 100 index of London's blue chip stocks. It touched a 12-year-low of 148 pence in October and closed on Friday at 203-3/4p.
The firm is due to announce annual results on February 18th.