Bad news for a lot of Siemens employees as the German company's execs have announced a plan to cut costs and make its business units more responsive and efficient which will see to the axing of no less than 4% of its workforce or 16,750 people. Set to also prepare Siemens for economic downrun , the cuts will mostly affect the administrative segments and are said to help the company save up to 1.2 billion Euro by 2010.

Siemens has started talking with labor representatives about the job cuts and naturally, it has already faced an opposition as the IG Metall union has deemed the lay offs as being "totally excessive." Not that this should stop Siemens.