Zyxel cuts UK staff by a third

Marsden: this will bring us closer to customers

Zyxel has cut its UK headcount by more than a third as part of a pan-European centralisation drive.

The networking vendor now has 20 staff in the UK after chopping around a dozen local positions in the areas of marketing, product management, business development and sales.

Those functions will now be fulfilled by a new European team, which Zyxel has created alongside teams for the Americas, Emerging Markets and Others in a bid to get closer to its customers.

As part of the shake up, Lee Marsden has been elevated from UK sales director to UK managing director, while previous UK managing director Justin Kuo has been made European business development director.

Marsden told CRN the move had been in the offing for about a year.

“There were 16 product management positions in the UK, Germany and the Nordics just doing the same thing. By having this new layer in Europe we do not need to duplicate the resources," he said.

Marsden said Zyxel has set up a European team looking after new high-end products, such as WiMAX and ADSL, which had previously all been managed from Zyxel’s native Taiwan.

“This is a good example of how this brings us closer to our customers,” he said.

Marsden confirmed that none of the top management in the UK had lost their jobs. All employees had the opportunity to stay on and reapply for the new roles on offer, he added.