Economist Group set to make job cuts

The Economist Group is set to make a number of job cuts in the UK, despite a restructure of its commercial activities that will create a new sales unit.

Around 13 redundancies will be made from the businesses’ conferences, Economist Intelligence Unit and commercial services, as the group looks to provide a more integrated sales solutions from one single function, according to reports.

Nigel Ludlow, UK managing director of The Economist Group, said: “To respond to the growing interest among clients in marketing programmes that run across more than one part of our portfolio, we are establishing a strategic sales function that will create and sell these integrated packages.

“Although this area represents an opportunity for growth, the overall market conditions for advertising are tough and, unfortunately, we are planning to make a number of roles based in the UK redundant,” he added.

Andrew Rashbass kick-started a review of the group’s UK commercial strategy when he became chief executive last year – a number of individual business operations have been restructured around four regional divisions as a result.

The group plans to launch a marketing campaign later this year to build on the Economist‘s success, as the title bucked the downward trend and posted a 6% year on year circulation increase to around 182,500 copies in the latest ABC release.

Economist: www.economist.com