IBM's Buy of PwC Consulting Could Result in Layoffs

A spokesperson for PwC Consulting said Thursday that her company and IBM are currently weighing adjustments to staffing levels. While the companies are considering where their employees' skills are complementary and where they overlap, she said it was too early to speculate on the number of jobs potentially on the chopping block.

PwC Consulting has already made "multiple rounds" of job cuts in the last 18 months, she said. The layoffs were done, she said, in response to the poor economic climate and constraints against PwC's bidding on work for clients of PricewaterhouseCoopers, the accounting firm that is PwC Consulting's parent.

She said that the acquisition may close at the end of this month, or in early October.

A report in the Wall Street Journal Tuesday indicated that 4,000 jobs may be cut.

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In an interview the day after the acquisition was announced in July, Ralph Martino, vice president of strategy and marketing at IBM Global Services, where the PwC people 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," said Martino. "We will find opportunities for efficiency and we will get rid of redundancies."

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

Some of them may move into other units within IGS, Martino said.

An IGS spokeswoman declined to comment on staffing matters.

IBM is an audit client of PricewaterhouseCoopers.

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