Siemens announces massive worldwide job cuts

German electronics and engineering company Siemens was rumored end of June to be preparing a large-scale workforce reduction. Today the company announced the precise number who will be affected.

Over 16,750 jobs will be cut worldwide, shrinking the company's workforce by about 4%. It is estimated that this will save Siemens about €600 million a year until 2010, or €1.2 billion.

In March, the company unexpectedly announced it was cutting its quarterly earnings by €900 million ($1.4 billion), causing its stock value to take its biggest dive in 20 years. However, Siemens' CEO Peter Löscher maintained that Siemens would meet its goals for 2010.

Löscher is still relatively new to the chief executive office, coming into the position in May 2007 from pharmaceutical company Merck. He replaced Klaus Kleinfeld, who resigned from his position in the face of corruption and bribery scandals.

The company declined to specify the how many of the cuts will come from each individual country outside of Germany, but 5,250 of those terminated will be from German offices.