Dell Technologies to Cut at Least 2,000 Jobs After EMC Deal

(Bloomberg) -- Dell Technologies plans to cut about 2,000 to 3,000 jobs after acquiring EMC in the largest technology acquisition ever, according to people familiar with the company’s plans.

The reductions are planned for later this year and will be mostly in the US and in areas such as supply chain and general and administrative positions, as well as some marketing jobs, said the people. They asked not to be named because the dismissals aren’t public yet.

Dell is looking for cost savings of about $1.7 billion in the first 18 months after the transaction but is largely focused on using the deal to boost sales by several times that amount, the people added. The new company has 140,000 employees.

"As is common with deals of this size, there will be some overlaps we will need to manage and where some employee reduction will occur. We will do everything possible to minimize the impact on jobs," Dave Farmer, spokesman for Dell, wrote in an e-mail. "We expect revenue gains will outweigh any cost savings, and revenue growth drives employment growth."

See also: EMC, VMware to Vie for Hybrid Cloud After Dell Reorg

The acquisition, valued at about $67 billion when it was first announced almost a year ago, brings together the leading provider of data-storage products and one of the top makers of servers and personal computers. Both companies have grappled with rising interest in cloud services from rivals such as Amazon.com Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google.

While expanding revenue is the main focus of the deal, Dell Founder Michael Dell said Sept. 7 "there are some overlapping functions and that sort of thing -- that’s not the primary feature of this, but there is some of that." He declined to give any estimate for job reductions.