Scandinavian IT services vendor Tieto has begun the process of axing around 350 staff in Northern Europe in a bid to weather the global economic storm.
Tieto, which currently employs 16,600, will cut 170 jobs in Sweden with a further 180 going from Denmark, Norway, Germany, the UK, Latvia and India.
Hannu Syrjälä, CEO, Tieto, says: "The downturn of the overall economy has continued and this has lead to cautiousness in IT investments among our customers in certain industry sectors. We are taking actions to address this change in demand and to reduce overall costs."
In its full year results, released earlier this month, Tieto warned of a tough 2009 and said that demand from the financial services industry would be hit particularly hard.
Tieto has endured a stormy few months, fighting off an unsolicited takeover bid from private equity firm Nordic Capital last year.
In January 2008 the firm embarked on a restructuring and cost cutting programme designed to generate annual savings of more than EUR100 million by the end of 2009.
The programme, followed an 18-month run of volatile earnings which had mainly been been caused by project over-runs in the company's banking and insurance and healthcare and welfare units.