AMD Bloodbath – New CEO Lays Off 1400 Employees

AMD yesterday announced a restructuring plan and implementation of operational efficiency initiatives designed to strengthen the company’s competitive positioning. AMD expects that these combined actions will create a more competitive cost structure and rebalance the company’s global workforce skillsets, helping AMD to continue delivering industry-leading products while improving productivity, reducing time-to-market and better aligning with key industry trends that are expected to drive growth. Our phone started ringing and our e-mail inbox was filling up with PR team members telling us that they were let go yesterday. Most of the PR team appears to have been let go, so it will be interesting to see how this impacts sites like Legit Reviews down the road. Rory Read has certainly shaken things up over there. AMD expects that the restructuring plan will result operational savings, primarily in operating expense, of approximately $10 million in the fourth quarter of 2011 and $118 million in 2012, primarily through a reduction of its global workforce by approximately 10% and the termination of existing contractual commitments. The workforce reduction will occur across all functions globally and is expected to be substantially completed by the end of the first quarter of 2012. AMD had 12,019 employees as of Oct. 1, but our inside sources say 1400 people will be gone when the dust settles.