Irish employees of the Japanese engineering and electronics firm, Mitsubishi Electric Corp, will be unaffected by yesterday's announcement of a three-year reform plan which includes workforce cuts of 14,500.
Mitsubishi said in a statement that the job cuts, to be completed by March, 2002, would include shedding 8,400 workers at home and 6,100 abroad, although it gave no further details on how or where the cuts would be made.
However, the president of Mitsubishi Electric Ireland, Mr Fergus Madigan, said there were "no implications whatsoever" for the company's 50 employees here.
"We have a very focused sales and market distributing strategy here in Ireland. We are actually on an expansion programme, diversifying our product portfolio at the moment," he said.
The restructuring news came after major rivals like Toshiba Corp, Hitachi Ltd and NEC Corp announced sweeping reforms and staff reductions, raising concerns that Mitsubishi may have been dragging its feet.
Mitsubishi, hit by a slump in the chip market and economic woes in Japan and emerging markets, faces its second loss in a row this business year.
Lagging in the race to develop new generations of computers, semiconductors and consumer electronics, Mitsubishi is struggling to find new products that can fuel sales and profit growth.
Mr Madigan, who is a member of the company's European board, said the possibility of Mitsubishi establishing a manufacturing operation in the State remained, although it would be a facility in the component software area.
Under its new medium-term management programme, Mitsubishi said it would channel resources into the key information and telecommunications sectors to reach its goal of a pre-tax profit of 120 billion yen ($1.0 billion) on a consolidated basis in the year to March, 2002.
It also plans to boost profitability, aiming for a return-on-equity ratio of more than 10 per cent by the end of the three-year programme. Mitsubishi expects to post a pre-tax loss of 80 billion yen on a consolidated basis in the year to March 1999.
