IBM says corporate cull rumours are 'baseless'

Big Blue says reports it is about to axe more than 100,000 staff are overblown

IBM has dismissed as "ridiculous and baseless" rumours that it is about to embark on the largest staff axing in its history.

More than one in four Big Blue staff could be shown the door in the biggest corporate cull in Big Blue's history, an unconfirmed report from the US claimed over the weekend.

According to Forbes, "Project Chrome" – which is set to kick off this week – will leave 26 per cent of IBM's workforce, or 110,000 employees, without a job by the end of February. The article came days after IBM announced it had suffered its eleventh consecutive quarterly decline in revenue as it reorients its business towards fast-growth areas such as cloud and mobile.

However, IBM rebuffed the rumours in a strongly worded comment sent to CRN this afternoon.

"IBM does not comment on rumours, even ridiculous or baseless ones. If anyone had checked information readily available from our public earnings statements, or had simply asked us, they would know that IBM has already announced the company has just taken a $600m [£398m] charge for workforce rebalancing," IBM said.

"This equates to several thousand people, a mere fraction of what's been reported. Last year, IBM hired 45,000 people, and the company currently has about 15,000 job openings around the world for new skills in growth areas such as cloud, analytics, security, and social and mobile technologies. This is evidence that IBM continues to remix its skills to match where we see the best opportunities in the marketplace."

IBM employee forum Alliance@IBM has also refused as yet to confirm the information in the Forbes report, saying it has no firm information on what percentage or how many employees will be cut in the US or worldwide.

"We all know this is the time of the year that IBM does cut jobs. Always be ready for it," it said.