EDS is to move up to 15,000 jobs to cheaper locations over the next "couple of years", according to the company's CEO Michael Jordan, bringing the total number of "offshore" employees to around 45,000.

The company has already cut around 1,000 jobs this year, but Jordan told The FT he wants to lose another 4,000 from the developed world by the end of 2006.

These cuts will be a combination of moving jobs to countries with lower hiring costs, and through deploying new technology tools designed to improve productivity. Layers of unnecessary management would be stripped out, he said.

The company also had to increase productivity by three to four per cent every year, he added.

While jobs are being slashed in the developed world, the company is losing no time picking up the slack in cheaper locations. EDS said it plans to open a new centre in China, with 1,000 employees, and it recently bought Mphasis, an Indian IT services firm employing some 12,000 people.

But all these cuts don't come cheap. The FT notes that with so many redundancy payments owing this quarter, the company had to issue a warning that its profits would not meet Wall Street expectations. ®