The Westfield Group to Cut 10% of Workers

The Westfield Group is probably not a company that you have really heard much about in the past. Though you may find yourself in a position where you are, if you happen to live in one of the companies where they work, in one of their shops or using one of their products without knowing much about it. So, before we go on to talk about the layoffs lets begin by taking a look at the company and how they chosen to describe themselves, “The Westfield Group has interests in and operates one of the world’s largest shopping centre portfolios. The global portfolio has 109 high quality regional shopping centres in Australia, New Zealand, the United States, the United Kingdom and Brazil valued at A$61.7 billion, with approximately 23,727 retailers in 10 million square metres of retail space.”

The sizeable company, is getting ready to cut back on 10 percent of its workers in Australia, according to the current information circulating around the industry. The company is getting ready to slice back about 400 workers when all is said and done. For now, because everything is in the rumors stage, the company has not put out any information about the job losses. We do not know which workers are set to be impacted by the cuts, we do not know when the layoffs will go into effect or how much notice they will be give. We have no word on what kind of severance benefits, if any, the company is going to be offering to the soon to be displaced workers.

Interestingly enough the company’s latest numbers were not discouraging. As a matter of fact they were actually downright optimistic. Here is an excerpt, “The Westfield Group (ASX:WDC) today announced its half year results to 30 June 2012 with AIFRS net profit of $800.1m, up 31% on the previous corresponding period. Funds from Operations (FFO) were $751.2m representing 32.8 cents per security, up 3.1% on the previous corresponding period. Westfield Group Co-CEOs, Peter Lowy and Steven Lowy AM said: “In November 2010, we outlined a strategic plan that positioned the Group to generate greater shareholder value. The first step was the establishment of the Westfield Retail Trust (WRT) and since then we have implemented the strategic plan through a number of transactions. These results highlight the benefits of this strategy.” During the first half, the Group completed a number of transactions raising $4.8bn of gross proceeds, including the joint venture of 12 assets in the United States and the divestment of 12 non-core assets.”

So one has to wonder, which good numbers why the company would result to further job cuts in order to boost its profits again. For the time being tings seem to be going well.

Sadly, this is not the only company in retail that is cutting back. For those of you who missed out on our earlier coverage here is a look at our cuts to Best Buy, “Well it looks like the company is going to have to adjust their numbers, as they are getting ready to get rid of a significant number of their staff. The company is getting ready to layoff a whopping 2,400 workers from their retail and repair operations in order to set their finances to right. There is still the question of whether or not these cuts will qualify as a mass layoff action, or possibly as several different mass layoffs.”