Opus Cuts UK Jobs

Opus eliminates jobs at unprofitable U.K. unit

March 18 - Opus International Consultants, a global engineering consulting firm, is cutting a fifth of its U.K. workforce as it tries to halt losses and adjust to a market downturn.

The company will eliminate 75 of its 360 U.K.-based positions, according to a statement to the NZX today. The U.K. unit had a pretax loss of NZ$5.4 million in 2008.

“We have taken this action after putting significant effort over a number of months into improving revenue generation and diversification of revenue sources in a declining and very tough market,” said managing director Kevin Thompson.

The jobs cuts will help match workers to the available workload “to address the losses being incurred.”

The shares rose 5% to NZ$1.25 on the NZX and have declined about 11% in the past month while the NZX 50 fell about 2%.

The U.K. operations were a black spot for Opus, which lifted group net profit by 23% to NZ$3.3 million last year with revenue climbing 25% to NZ$75 million. Revenue beat its prospectus forecast by 18% and profit was 11% ahead.

(Businesswire)

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