Symantec to lay-off 10 per cent of staff as it prepares to split in two

Around 2,000 staff to be made redundant in preparation for company split

Security software giant Symantec is to make around 2,000 staff redundant - about 10 per cent of the total - as it shapes up in advance of a plan to split the company in two.

The company declined to say where the axe would fall, but said that the job losses would fall across "a number of locations and functions within the company". Chief financial officer Thomas Seifert said that the job losses would enable Symantec to become a "leaner and more efficient organisation".

In a conference call with financial analysts, he added: "Our philosophy is to manage each business separately, minimise disruption to our businesses, partners, customers and employees and execute a well-managed separation."

Symantec's decision to split in two reflects a growing trend among US technology companies, in many cases reversing effectively acquisitions made over the past 10 years - and no doubt advised by the same investment banks that also proposed and advised on the acquisitions in the first place.

The security software business generated revenues of $4.2bn in Symantec's fiscal-year 2014, while the "information management" business, which includes backup and recovery, archiving, e-discovery and storage software, generated $2.5bn in revenues.

CEO Michael Brown will take over as CEO of the security side of the software vendor, while current Symantec executive vice president John Gannon has been made general manager of the information management business and will become CEO when the spin-off is complete.

The company announced the plan to split the company in two last month, with one side focusing on security and the other on document storage, effectively reversing the $13.5bn acquisition of Veritas in 2004 during former CEO John Thompson's decade-long shopping spree from 1999 to 2009.

It follows another major round of job losses last year, when it cut about 1,700 jobs.

Given Veritas's intention to become a $5bn turnover company by 2007, announced by its CEO Gary Bloom five years earlier, it could be argued that the Veritas acquisition has been a failure.