Major Google investor calls for ‘aggressive action’ on jobs and salaries

In brief

A major shareholder in Google’s parent company Alphabet has urged CEO Sundar Pichai to cut costs like other tech companies.

Sir Christopher Hohn, managing director of hedge fund TCI which has a $6bn stake in Alphabet, said: “[T]he cost base of Alphabet is too high and that management needs to take aggressive action. The company has too many employees and the cost per employee is too high.”

Hohn called Alphabet’s headcount growth, a rate of 20% per year since 2017, “excessive”, and said it could be operated “more effectively with significantly fewer employees”.

Read editor Omar Oakes’ column this week: “While digital media giants announce layoffs, above-the-line media could prove remarkably resilient in this recession.”