Do they know something we don't?

According to Reuters, IBM is planning to cut up to 13,000 jobs world-wide. This would amount to about 4 per cent of its present work force.

“The world's largest computer company said it would reduce bureaucracy and scale back in slower-growth countries, using global teams instead of single-company operations to deliver some services. One specific move would be to eliminate an unnecessary layer of pan-European management, it said.”

How interesting. We have been told for years that integration of European economies was the best way forward and everyone was looking to dealing with businesses in pan-European terms.

It seems IBM is reversing that trend. It is getting rid of “an unnecessary layer of pan-European management” and, presumably, concentrating on individual countries instead. (Not that it is going to do western Europe much good, consisting as it does of slow-growth economies.)

So, I ask again: do they know something we don’t?