IBM, PWC Mull Head Count

A PwC spokeswoman said the two companies are weighing adjustments to staffing levels. While they are considering where their employees' skills are complementary and where they overlap, it's too early to speculate on the number of jobs potentially on the chopping block, she said.

The Wall Street Journal last week reported that as many as 4,000 jobs could be cut.

New York-based PwC Consulting has already made "multiple rounds" of job cuts in the past 18 months, the spokeswoman said. The layoffs were made in response to the poor economic climate and constraints against PwC's bidding on work for clients of PricewaterhouseCoopers, PwC Consulting's parent, she said.

The spokeswoman said IBM's acquisition of PwC is expected to close at the end of this month or in early October.

In an interview the day after the acquisition was announced in July, Ralph Martino, vice president of strategy and marketing at IBM Global Services (IGS), where the PwC staff will primarily be placed, told CRN that some cuts were possible.

"The redundancies would be staff functions, back-office functions and non-customer-facing functions," Martino said. "We will find opportunities for efficiency, and we will get rid of redundancies."

The PwC Consulting employees that IBM keeps on board will, in tandem with employees in IGS' Business Innovation Services unit, comprise a new, as-yet-unnamed unit.