Report: IBM thinking of cutting up to 3K German jobs

• Germany's WirtschaftsWoche reports (quoting an IBM union rep) IBM (IBM +0.8%) is thinking of laying off up to 3K German workers, or 18% of its local workforce, over the next two years.
• A German trade union believes 2,500 of the layoffs are "relatively fixed," with another 500 possible if conditions deteriorate. 1,000-1,200 of the layoffs are expected to come from IBM's slumping consulting and outsourcing ops, which have been pressured by (among other things) cloud services adoption.
• Big Blue had a global headcount of 379,592 at the end of 2014, down by over 51K from a year earlier. 38K of the lost jobs stemmed from asset sales such as Lenovo's purchase of IBM's x86 server unit. SG&A spend was down 10.4% Y/Y in Q3 due to job cuts, asset sales, and forex, and R&D spend down 4.9%.