Walmart is a US-based multinational retail corporation that employs 2.3 million workers worldwide. In late 2015, the company eliminated hundreds of positions in its headquarters, followed by a reduction in 7,000 back-office accounting positions. It has decided to lay off more employees in the wake of increasing e-commerce spending and rising employee wages.

The Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer plans to eliminate jobs at its headquarters and regional personnel that support stores, according to the report.

Many of the eliminations are likely to affect WalMart’s human resources department, a large team that some senior executives believe should be more efficient or whose duties could be handled by outside consultants.

However, Walmart has not made any announcement regarding the job cuts.

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IFM Correspondent

October 4, 2016: Dutch bank ING, the country’s biggest lender, announced plans to shed 7,000 jobs, mainly in Belgium and The Netherlands. The plan is part of cost cutting measure for the company, which will help it save $1.01 billion by 2021. The rise of online banking competitors is forcing the bank to reshape its digital banking strategy.

ING presented the job losses in Belgium and the Netherlands as being part of its ‘Think Forward’ strategy aimed at digitising more of the group’s operations.

Rik Vandenberghe, chief executive of the bank’s Belgian arm, said on Monday that the decision was “a shock for a lot of people … it was not an easy decision, I have not slept well these last days.”

Ralph Hamers, chief executive of ING Group, said, “You have to announce these programmes and these intentions at a time when you can afford them. We’re strong right now, we have good results, we are growing and then you have to do the repairs, and not when you don’t have any choice anymore.”

He also highlighted that ING had been hit — like other European banks — by low interest rates in the eurozone and tough regulation.

Belgian and Dutch unions reacted angrily, but analysts said the job losses were the result of the online transformation of the banking industry.

The move is the third financial sector restructuring announced in Belgium in recent weeks. Earlier, Axa Belgium and P&V also announced planned job cuts.

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IFM Correspondent

July 20, 2016: Keeping a close eye on Brexit and its anticipated impact, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has cut its global growth forecasts for the next two years. The move included a nearly full percentage point reduction in the UK’s 2017 growth forecast.

Cutting its World Economic Outlook forecast for the fifth time in 15 months, the IMF said that it now expects global GDP to grow at 3.1 percent in 2016 and at 3.4 percent in 2017 — down 0.1 percentage point for each year from estimates issued in April.

On the day before Britain’s June 23 EU referendum, the IMF was ‘prepared to upgrade our 2016-17 global growth projections slightly’, IMF Chief Economist Maury Obstfeld said in a statement. “But Brexit has thrown a spanner in the works.”

The IMF said that the impact will be hardest in Britain, where the institution cut its 2016 growth forecast to 1.7 percent, down 0.2 percentage points from its April forecast. It cut the 2017 UK forecast more sharply, by 0.9 percentage points, to 1.3 percent.

The IMF lifted its euro zone forecast slightly for 2016, but cut its 2017 outlook by 0.2 percentage point to 1.4 percent for 2017.

As far as China’s outlook is concerned, IMF has kept it largely unchanged. Recessions in Brazil and Russia will be less severe than previously forecast this year due partly to some recovery in oil and commodities prices, the IMF said, adding that both countries will return to positive growth in 2017.

The Fund urged policymakers not to accept the tepid growth rates as a ‘new normal’ and said that they should support demand in the near term and structural reforms to aid medium-term growth.

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