Telstra axe falls in Europe

The European arm of Australia's Telstra has cut 19 staff.

The axe began to fall earlier this week with news reaching silicon.com from an insider at the telco yesterday.

Telstra employs thousands of people worldwide and around 200 in the UK, where it focuses on hosting and converged voice and data services.

However, the cuts affect a range of technical staff at various levels of seniority, as well as those in the finance and legal teams. One casualty is thought to be IT director Henry McNeill, a contributor over the past year to silicon.com's CIO Jury.

Telstra issued a brief statement yesterday saying: "Telstra Europe can confirm that a small number of staff have recently left the business as a result of the scheduled completion of a number of integration projects following recent strategic acquisitions."

The implication is that the layoffs were expected. However, one source told silicon.com "there was definitely no consultation period". He said staff knew nothing before being asked to go to a personnel office and being given the bad news.