Newly slimmed-down Racal Electronics Plc – it became Chubbless this week, is once again subjecting its Racal Datacom Ltd to a drastic reorganisation in an attempt to make it leaner. Some 25 staff have been made redundant from the Hook, Hampshire office, most of them in engineering. A further 30 engineers are moving from Hook to Reading-based Racal Research Ltd, where they are to join an existing team that is developing adaptive bandwidth management products. ISDN and modem development is being concentrated in Miami, which means that the Hook engineers are sure to focus on tweaking globally-designed products for the UK market. Hook has lost its strategic marketing expertise too; in future, it is to handle UK channels alone. In addition, product-specific strategy is henceforth to be placed in the hands of the various business divisions.
