This was published 21 years ago

Accenture to sack up to 30 executives

Up to 30 senior executives from Accenture's Australian offices will be handed redundancy slips as early as next week as the downturn in IT consulting continues to bite.

It is understood the cuts will include some of the firm's 90-odd partners in Sydney and Melbourne.

Speculation about the proposed sackings has been rife for a week, since a memo that mentioned senior job cuts, written by the group's global chairman, Joe Forehand, was leaked to the press.

A spokesman for Accenture in Sydney declined, however, to comment on the job cuts.

The downsizing of the firm's senior staff and operations in the Asia Pacific stems largely from the group's realisation that US and European business models do not apply to a region where it raises only 7 per cent of its revenue.

The Australian lay-offs will follow the consulting firm's closure of its New Zealand offices last month as part of the major restructuring in the region, which left nearly 100 staff without jobs.

Last October the firm offered 200 redundancies to its Australian workforce.

Net revenues from the Asia-Pacific operations of Accenture fell 8 per cent in three months up to March (in US dollar terms), despite revenues for the whole group having risen by 1 per cent in the same period.

Accenture is expected to announce further plans for global reorganisation when it issues its quarterly results on July 12.

The company, which has five key operating groups, is expected to concentrate on its higher growth government and resource outsourcing businesses.

Once Andersen Consulting, created from the now-disgraced accounting firm Andersen, the firm was renamed Accenture before being listed on the New York Stock Exchange in July last year.

Even though the boom of the 1990s that spawned Accenture is a distant memory, a Morgan Stanley report on Tuesday said: "We believe the company will successfully manage through weak IT consulting environment by generating revenue form multiple sources, including transformational business outsourcing, and buy expanding operating margin through vigorous cost control."

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