Cisco has got itself a new top boy for UK and Ireland.

British born Duncan Mitchell is the new head Borg for the region, replacing American Dick Gillespie who retires this month after two years in the job.

He has said Cisco's restructuring plans, announced on Friday, will apply to the UK business. The company will move from three lines of business to 11 technology groups.

At the time of the announcement Cisco chief exec, John Chambers, said: "We are making these changes at a time when we are beginning to see signs that our business is stabilising. Our line of business structure has served us very well in the past, when customer segments and product requirements were very distinct."

Cisco's 11 technology groups are: Access, aggregation, Cisco IOS Technologies Division (ITD), Internet Switching and Services, Ethernet Access, Network Management Services, Core Routing, Optical, Storage, Voice and Wireless.

Mitchell is taking the top dog role at a tough time for Cisco. Earlier this month Cisco posted profits for its fourth quarter of just $7 million, down 99 per cent from $796 million profits in the same period last year, as the slowdown in the telecoms market continued to hit sales at the networking giant.

The results, which were in line with Wall St expectations, showed Cisco's sales dropping 25 per cent from $5.72 billion to $4.3 billion in its fourth quarter this year. For the full year, Cisco recorded losses of $1.01 billion compared to income of $2.67 billion for fiscal 2000. ®

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