Thousands of job losses at huge global companies were announced yesterday, offering further evidence that the economic slowdown is far from over.

Johnson & Johnson, the consumer goods and healthcare giant, said that it would cut up to 7 per cent of its 117,000 employees worldwide, meaning that as many as 8,190 people could lose their jobs.

Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN), the joint venture between Nokia and Siemens, the telecommunications groups, is set to shed up to 5,700 jobs from its workforce. Rajeev Suri, its new chief executive, is trying to reinvigorate the operation by cutting €500 million (£448 million) from its cost base.

NSN said that it wanted to trim up to 9 per cent of its 64,000-strong workforce and expected to complete the cost-saving plan by 2011. Mr Suri replaced Simon Beresford-Wylie, the Nokia veteran, at the beginning of October.

Johnson & Johnson is the latest healthcare company to have decided to slash costs to negotiate the difficulties of funding research into new medicines. As patents on some of its biggest-selling drugs are close to expiring, it needs to find fresh treatments to fill the gap in revenues. However, bringing a new drug to market costs more than $1 billion (£609 million), with many failing in early stage clinical trials.

By 2011, Johnson & Johnson hopes to save $1.4 billion to $1.7 billion a year through the cuts, with an $800 mill-ion to $900 million cost reduction expected next year. It had already cut about 3 per cent of its workforce in July 2007.

William Weldon, chief executive of Johnson & Johnson, said: “This is what we need to do to ‘rightsize’ the company to make sure we have the resources to invest.”

NSN, which is split 50-50 between the Finnish and German companies, has struggled over the past year. A €908 million impairment charge relating to the unit pushed Nokia, the world’s largest mobile phone maker, into the red in the third quarter. As its owners fight falling sales, they are anxious to cut its costs.

NSN has about 1,000 workers in Britain, where it runs Orange’s network, as well as T-Mobile and 3 UK’s infrastructure. It also owns Apertio, a customer-management platform provider, based in Bristol, which it bought for €140 million early last year.

It is hoped that Britain will not bear the brunt of the cuts as Mr Suri is keen to refocus the NSN business on its services operations — the main part of its UK business. The company also has large numbers of staff in China, India and Brazil, as well as in Finland and Germany.

NSN has increased its workforce since the merger was announced in 2006, when the combined company had 60,000 staff, despite saying at the time that it anticipated trimming up to 15 per cent of its workforce.

Nokia said last month that it expected the unit to lose “significant” market share this year. The company has suffered from competition from low-cost providers, most notably Huawei, the Chinese equipment vendor. Ericsson, its Swedish rival, has weathered the storm better over the past year, but it showed that it was not immune to the downturn in recording a 6 per cent decline in sales during the third quarter.

UPM-Kymmene, a Finnish company that is the world’s largest magazine paper maker, plans to lay off 870 workers and close four mills. Most of the job losses will be in the plywood and sawn timber sectors at its Finnish mills, where it laid off 1,200 workers temporarily this year in an attempt to save costs.

HSBC sheds 1,700 staff

— HSBC is slashing 1,700 back-office staff, taking job losses at the bank this year to 4,600 (Helen Power writes). HSBC — whose chief executive, Michael Geoghegan, has relocated from London to Hong Kong, suggesting its focus for growth is Asia — will close three credit-card processing centres in Southampton, Sheffield and Southend. Rob MacGregor, the national officer of Unite, the bank’s biggest union, said: “Unite views the loss of 1,700 staff as a fundamental mistake. The union does not believe this will do anything to improve the company’s future performance.”

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