The Bookseller.com

5th December 2008

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Borders US sheds 20% of corporate jobs

03.06.08

Borders is to shed 274 "corporate" jobs from its head office in Ann Arbor and elsewhere, but has not made any bookselling staff redundant. The cuts, 20% of its total corporate positions, are much larger than were rumoured at Book Expo America (held last weekend in Los Angeles), but the US retailer said that they amounted to less than 1% of its total workforce.

Speculation about the cuts emerged at BEA, when publishers learned that the retailer had cancelled all its vendor meetings for the following week. The move was presaged by c.e.o. George Jones when he used last week's first-quarter results to reveal that the company was working with a third party advisor to develop a plan to reduce its annual operating expenses by $120m.

In the latest announcement, Jones stated: "While it is always difficult to eliminate jobs because of the impact on employees and their families, this is an important step in our company's cost reduction initiative that will improve our profitability and put us in a much better position for long-term success."

In an earlier announcement, responding to speculation that included suggestions that America's largest bookseller Barnes & Noble was lining up a bid for Borders US, Borders said that it was still in the midst of exploring strategic alternatives and had not engaged in substantive discussions regarding any specific transaction to date.
 

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