Some 6,350 of the losses will be in the Industry division – one of three created earlier this year as part of Löscher’s streamlining efforts. Around 2,500 of the division’s losses will be in Germany and 2,050 in the rest of Europe.

Precise details of where the cuts will occur have not been released, but one activity that will be affected is Siemens’ pick-and-place machines business, known as Electronic Assembly Systems, where 330 jobs (250 of them in Germany) are due to disappear by the end of this year.

The cutbacks affect about 4% of Siemens’ 430,000 global workforce. "The speed at which business is changing worldwide has increased considerably, and we’re orienting Siemens accordingly," Löscher (shown above) explains. "Against the backdrop of a slowing economy, we have to become more efficient."

• Siemens is investing more than $20m in a new plant to produce mechanical drives in the US, mainly for wind turbines. The new plant, in Illinois, expected to be completed in March 2009, will create around 350 new jobs over the next three to four years. It will assemble and test mechanical drives for the cement, coal, minerals, and oil and gas industries, as well as for wind turbines. Siemens claims to be the largest manufacturer of wind turbine drives in the US.