Keane cuts jobs in Birmingham

Keane, the services and consultancy company, last week cut 21 jobs whilst remaining adamant of a growth strategy. The redundancies at the Birmingham-based company included 19 IT and two administrative staff. Announced last Thursday, Keane blamed the lay-offs on the fast moving nature of the industry. This leaves the company, which also has offices in London and Leeds, with around 340 staff. Keane said the long-term requirements of customers necessitated more project experience and skills. Georgina Fisk, Keane marketing manager, said the company was concentrating on application outsourcing and development, for example data warehousing. She denied the cuts were due to a disappointing 1998 at the company. "We are still planning on growing, and expansion is continuing. The entire organisation is continuously recruiting and we have an aggressive strategy for recruitment," stressed Fisk. She said the redundancies were across the company but was unable to give more detail on the actual areas affected. Keane is the UK subsidiary of US IT services giant Keane Inc. It swallowed Keane, then Icom Solutions, for £30.6 million in stock last August. See earlier story. Icom - formerly IMI Computing - became part of the Keane empire, with president John Keane Jr outlining a strategy to hit sales of $1 billion by 1999 through acquisition. The UK company's financial year ends on 31 March. It expects growth of around 80 per cent for sales and profit before tax on the previous year. 1997 showed turnover at £18.9 million and profit before tax at £1.9 million. ®