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Irish cutbacks reflect global Net slowdown
Friday, January 19 2001
by Sheila McDonald


Ireland has seen the loss of more than 250 jobs in dot.com firms this month,
following the global trend toward Internet slowdown. 

The most dramatic announcement came on Thursday when three top e-business firms
-- Ebeon, Nua and SoftCo -- confirmed that they would make significant job cuts,
with Ebeon closing down entirely and laying off nearly 200 staff. Global fruit
giant Fyffes also said on Thursday that it would significantly reduce operations
at its Worldoffruit subsidiary, a portal that failed to gain industry acceptance
as a neutral trading point for fresh produce.



Ten-year-old SoftCo, which linked last year with Snap Printing to develop the
ambitious Printorigin.com exchange for European printing services, said it would
lay off less than 20 percent of staff and would close its Florida operation. The
number of job cuts at Nua, which employs 60, is unknown although they could
amount to one third of staff.



The Internet services company Oniva also said earlier in January that it would
close its Belfast office and cut 21 of its 150 jobs.



Ireland is less vulnerable to the dot.com slowdown since few Internet operations
reached the scale of the Ebeon investment. Ambitious Internet operations like the
digital media operations of US media companies -- including the New York Times,
CNN, NBC and News Corporation -- have all announced drastic cutbacks amounting to
more than 1,000 jobs this month. 



This week some of the most dramatic job cuts were announced, including cutbacks
at the search engine AltaVista, which said it would drop 200 jobs (25 percent of
staff) and the Internet analyst firm Jupiter Media Metrix, which is to cut 80
jobs next month.



Most of the Internet job losses have been attributed to a slow-down in dot.com
advertising and the consequent reluctance of many firms to invest heavily in
Internet development. But a separate slowdown has affected the hardware industry
as PC sales begin to slow in the US, triggering job cuts and relocations in that
sector.



Gateway, which employs more than 1500 in Ireland, is to announce later this month
how its 10 percent across the board cuts will affect its Irish operations, and
3Com is to detail its job cuts in February. Xerox, which struggled in December
against rumours that it was on the verge of bankruptcy, did manage to secure
USD435 million in financing from GE capital in January, although it is still
seeking to eliminate 5,200 jobs from its global operations.



Europe is enjoying significant bright notes, however, including the sharp rise in
Internet usage -- CyberAtlas reported on Thursday that home Internet users now
number 11 million in the UK. This, along with Europe's continuing love affair
with the mobile phone, are likely to give a boost to the dot.com ad sector. 



The advent of unmetered, high-speed Internet access services in UK and Germany is
also expected to give a lift to the dot.com sector later in 2001.