Chip and PC giant Fujitsu, with more than 1,000 people at its telecoms and IT divisions in Northern Ireland, will axe 4,500 jobs worldwide. The Japanese group blames economic slowdown and a fall off in demand for PCs and mobile phones for a major slump in its business performance. Fujitsu yesterday reported a net loss of 174.7 billion yen for the first half of the year compared to a net income of 17.2 billion yen for the same period in 2000 and said the outlook for its business is not likely to improve in the short term. The group confirmed that the majority of the redundancies will be outside Japan.