Software and systems integration house CISI SA, Paris is planning to cut 142 jobs because of a serious decline in profits, which, if allowed to continue, could threaten the company’s future. CISI, which is 63.9%-owned by Thomson-CEA Industrie SA and 36%-owned by Cap Gemini Sogeti SA, saw 1991 net profits plummet to $2.3m from $12.6m the year before. According to Les Echos, the firm will eliminate 101 jobs from its subsidiary CISI Ingenierie and 41 from CISI Transtec. Some 124 of these will be lay-offs. A company spokesman said the results for this year are not as high as we had hoped, and the prospects for 1993 are not good. We have done our best to keep staff, even to the point of losing profit. We can’t accept a bigger decline in our profits, which would bring our future into question. CISI will make the measures official today and next Thursday at extraordinary meetings between the management and labour committees of both parent organisations. The company acknowledges that the unions oppose such radical measures they do not believe that everything possible has been done in terms of job forecasting and re-training. This year’s survey of French software and systems houses by the magazine Logiciels & Services placed CISI in 13th place, with 1991 total revenues coming out at the equivalent of $278m. Of this, some $173.6m business came from the French market.
