Global data storage company EMC Corp plans to cut unspecified number of jobs in the first quarter of 2016 as part of its restructuring efforts to reduce annual costs by $850 million.
The move comes ahead of the completion of its acquisition by global tech giant Dell Inc. Dell is scheduled to merge with EMC by October 2016, subject to approval by EMC shareholders.
The layoffs are planned "to keep pace" with changing landscape of the industry, EMC said in a regulatory filing on 31 December. The company had 70,000 employees by the end of 2014.
"The plan consists of a reduction in force which will be substantially completed by the end of the first quarter of 2016 and fully completed by the end of 2016.The total charge resulting from this plan is expected to be approximately $250 million, with total cash payments associated with the plan expected to be $220 million," the filing said.
EMC, which has a market capitalisation of nearly $50 billion, saw its profit decline in the recent quarters. Revenue growth in the company's core data storage business almost remained flat in the past two years. Its revenue stood at $24.4 billion in 2014.
In October last year, Dell had agreed to buy EMC for $66 billion. The deal could enable Dell, the world's third-largest maker of personal computers, to expand its footprint "among corporate clients".
Dell became a private company in 2013 after Michael Dell and private equity firm Silver Lake went for a "leveraged buyout" of the company in a deal worth $25 billion. The company's founder, Michael Dell, is currently trying to transform it into full-fledged enterprise computing services provider.
