Warren Buffet's Berkshire cuts 21,000 jobs
By siliconindia   |   Monday, 28 December 2009, 22:06 IST   |    2 Comments
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Warren Buffet's Berkshire cuts 21,000 jobs
New York: The impact of global economic slowdown has made Berkshire Hathaway to cut 21,000 jobs this year, due to the drop in revenues at its manufacturing and retail units. Currently, Warren Buffet's Berkshire and its subsidiaries have around 225,000 employees, which is 8.6 percent lesser than its 2008 employee strength of 246,083. Berkshire provided the employees' information in a document associated with its planned $26 billion acquisition of railroad Burlington Northern Santa Fe, Buffett did not reply to a request, for comment on the cuts, reports Bloomberg. Chief Executive Buffet manages a group of over 70 subsidiaries that sell products ranging from car insurance to ice cream. During the first nine months of 2009, profit at the company's manufacturing, service and retail units dropped by more than half. Due to this Buffet changed the CEOs of two operating units whose sales suffered during the downturn. Recently while addressing the 37,000 railroad employees of Burlington Northern, Buffet said, "When times are good, you are going to have more people employed than when times are bad." In May, Buffett said to his shareholders that he expected more cuts at Berkshire following reductions last year at Clayton Homes, which builds manufactured housing, and brick maker Acme Building Brands. Berkshire reported its first quarterly loss since 2001 in the first three months of 2009. Due to some recovery in the stock markets, the company returned to profit in the second and third quarters. "We will be adding people at some point, but we will not do it until we see the demand come back," Buffett said in a recent interview.

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