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BT to cut 4,000 jobs in restructuring after 'challenging year'

BT continues its efforts to recover from Italian accounting scandal and a slowdown in government work
BT continues its efforts to recover from Italian accounting scandal and a slowdown in government work

BT will cut 4,000 jobs and replace the boss of its global services business in a plan to tackle the source of an Italian accounting scandal that stunned the telecoms group in January. 

A restructuring of the unit, which employs 18,500 people, is part of chief executive Gavin Patterson's attempt to recover from the scandal and a profit warning caused by a slowdown in government work.

Those two issues together wiped £8 billion from the company's value. 

Seeking to draw a line under the difficult year, Patterson did not get a bonus, meaning his total pay package fell in the 2016/17 financial year to £1.3m, down by £4m on the year before.

The company said it would also claw back previous awards worth around £338,000. 

"This has been a challenging year for BT," Patterson said. 

"We've faced headwinds in the UK public sector and international corporate markets and must learn from what we found in our Italian business," he added. 

Setting out its plan for Global Services, the company said it no longer needed to own local networks outside Britain to serve its multinational and government customers, and could instead use new network technology and partnerships. 

Luis Alvarez, the boss of global services for the last five years, would be replaced by Bas Burger, who was most recently president of BT in the Americas, the company said.

"We wanted to make sure we had clear leadership to take us through this next period of the journey (and) we felt it was the right thing to do to make a change," Patterson said. 

The discovery of a £530m black hole in its Italian accounts had stunned the market and forced BT to cut forecasts for the next two years. 

As it scrambled to assert control, it appointed Alvarez to take direct responsibility for the European business. 

BT reported broadly flat underlying revenue for the year to the end of March of £24.1 billion and underlying earnings of £7.65 billion, in line with guidance it cut in January. 

For the current 2017-18 year, BT forecast that underlying revenue would again be broadly flat and core earnings would decline to a level between £7.5 billion and 7.6 billion. 

It also increased its dividend by 10%, but it said its dividend would not grow at the same rate next year.

Patterson said he needed more clarity on changes regulator Ofcom has proposed to the pricing of some of the most popular superfast broadband services before he could offer a view on 2018/19. 

He also needed a clearer picture on any additional investment in fibre to the home. 

BT has said it will connect 2 million homes with full-fibre by 2020, but it still lags many other countries in Europe.