One week after completing its contentious takeover of PeopleSoft, Oracle on Friday began sending layoff notices to some of the 11,700 employees working at its former rival.
Oracle said in a five-paragraph statement, released after the market closed, that it was laying off 5,000 employees, or nearly 10 percent of the combined Oracle-PeopleSoft work force.
Several people close to Oracle said employees would learn if they are out of a job when overnight packages were to be delivered to their homes yesterday.
The company did not say which portion of the 5,000 employees to lose their jobs worked for the former PeopleSoft and which at Oracle. Nor did the company's statement mention anything about severance packages.
Oracle formally completed its US$10.3 billion acquisition of PeopleSoft on Jan. 7. For years, Oracle, the undisputed leader in the corporate database market, has been struggling to gain a larger presence in the multibillion-dollar industry of back-office software that companies use to manage their finances, inventory and procurement needs. In that market, PeopleSoft was the uncontested No. 2, behind SAP of Germany.
Oracle said last summer that if it succeeded in a takeover of PeopleSoft, it would lay off as many as 6,000 PeopleSoft employees.
In an interview last month, Oracle's founder and chief executive, Lawrence Ellison, promised that his company would release at least one more major upgrade of PeopleSoft's flagship software product, and provide customers technical support for at least 10 more years.
"It's still not clear to me how, with so large a reduction in the work force, they're going to be able to continue to deliver the same level of service to PeopleSoft's customers," said Mark Smith, the chief executive of Ventana Research, a research firm in Silicon Valley.
MULTIFACETED: A task force has analyzed possible scenarios and created responses to assist domestic industries in dealing with US tariffs, the economics minister said The Executive Yuan is tomorrow to announce countermeasures to US President Donald Trump’s planned reciprocal tariffs, although the details of the plan would not be made public until Monday next week, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. The Cabinet established an economic and trade task force in November last year to deal with US trade and tariff related issues, Kuo told reporters outside the legislature in Taipei. The task force has been analyzing and evaluating all kinds of scenarios to identify suitable responses and determine how best to assist domestic industries in managing the effects of Trump’s tariffs, he
TIGHT-LIPPED: UMC said it had no merger plans at the moment, after Nikkei Asia reported that the firm and GlobalFoundries were considering restarting merger talks United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電), the world’s No. 4 contract chipmaker, yesterday launched a new US$5 billion 12-inch chip factory in Singapore as part of its latest effort to diversify its manufacturing footprint amid growing geopolitical risks. The new factory, adjacent to UMC’s existing Singapore fab in the Pasir Res Wafer Fab Park, is scheduled to enter volume production next year, utilizing mature 22-nanometer and 28-nanometer process technologies, UMC said in a statement. The company plans to invest US$5 billion during the first phase of the new fab, which would have an installed capacity of 30,000 12-inch wafers per month, it said. The
Taiwan’s official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) last month rose 0.2 percentage points to 54.2, in a second consecutive month of expansion, thanks to front-loading demand intended to avoid potential US tariff hikes, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. While short-term demand appeared robust, uncertainties rose due to US President Donald Trump’s unpredictable trade policy, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s economy this year would be characterized by high-level fluctuations and the volatility would be wilder than most expect, Lien said Demand for electronics, particularly semiconductors, continues to benefit from US technology giants’ effort
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
RSS