Steel maker ArcelorMittal may cut 9,000 from workforce globally - Hürriyet

The job cuts, in sales and administration, are part of the company's bid to cut expenditure by $1 billion, the Luxembourg- based company said.

ArcelorMittal, founded by the chief executive, Lakshmi Mittal, said this month it was cutting output of steel by more than 30 percent as an economic slowdown erodes demand from builders and carmakers. The company forecast earnings will slide as much as 48 percent to $2.5 billion in the fourth quarter.

"This has been a difficult decision to take," the executive vice president, Bernard Fontana, said in the statement. "The global economic reality means that it is only sensible to adopt such measures."

"This could be the start of a wave of cuts in the industry," Charlie Dove-Edwin, an analyst at MF Global Securities Ltd based in London, told Bloomberg. "What's interesting here is that no job cuts are coming from production, which implies that the company is optimistic of a turnaround."