Hmmmm..... 16,500 UK employees, and they have identified 90 UK jobs they want to axe. Even with my awful maths I can't get that near 20%! Without carrying too many fractions ('cos I'm too lazy!), I get around 0.006%. Considering that most buy-outs lead to cuts in overlapping staff, 0.006% sounds extremely minor. Even if you use the historic figure of 968 HUB contractors from May 2007 (so before HP got involved?), that's still only 0.058% of UK staff, assuming all those were UK-based which I note the article carefully avoids saying? Can I suggest the author was too quick to make a sensationalist headline to actually do the sums?

Ummmm.....there is a suggestion that a part of a part of EDS may lose up to 20% (but it is not clear if this is permanenet staff or contractors).

Stronger confirmation that 200 (yes, a whole 200) may go out of 16.5K.

700 have been offered the chance of voluntary redundancy (but presumably the expected hit rate is nowhere near 100%).

Is it a slow news week?

This doesn't sound like the massivve gutting of EDS that the headline hints at

Perhaps "a very few Blighty staff worry if they'll ever meet HP"?.

Compared, perhaps, to a far greater number who worry what will happen if they DO meet HP?

Redunancies are very rare these days anyway.

Any agressively managed large multi-national will just make working conditions a little less favourable to encourage the easily employable (those who would volunteer for redundancy anyway) jump ship for a better offer.

A pending merger will also make the upwardly technically mobile consider their future options carefully.

Lower head count, no extra expenditure, trebles all round.

Now an article comparing staff leaving and joining EDS in the months prior to the proposed aquisition/merger might give a much clearer picture of the true state of affairs but is perhaps a little harder to write.

Then again, most of El Reg are probably soaking up the rain in Bognor Regis at the moment - it is the middle of the silly season after all.

Having read most of these stories on the register there have been very few comments made by HP staff. I wonder if there is any reaction over there or are they all stunned light rabbits in headlights?

And potential customers of EDS, like the yellow branded happy insurance company based in Norwich…..how are they reacting to this? Would you want to be putting your IT lifeblood in the hands of these two at this time?

I'm surprised that there have been so few real comments so far.

....we're talking EDS statistics. Anyone (like myself) who are ex-EDS knows there's statistics, lies and EDS spreadsheets. I doubt we'll know for a few months who or how many will go. I suspect, the ones that will go first are the ex-civil servents on good contract conditions (expensive to EDS) who are being sought for early retirements?

I feel so sad for many rank and file members of EDS as they've mostly never been supported by EDS senior staff. Loads EDS properganda has been siad on how great their sales, support figures are, but few actions are ever really taken. Sack the whole senior and middle managers and I wont shred a tear. But, sack a few of the bright diamonds who have to work through crap day after day, and I'll raise a glass and drink to your good health.

At the end of the day, what about EDS? They produce nothing. They own nothing. They have nothing. All they do is provide a service with no real tangible assets. That's no basis for life.

I would guess that the guys in Plano will be crapping themselves right now. It's always been a bit thin over there in the last year or so but now with HP central over in CA Plano may just become a ghost town.

And with the big boys looking at some tasty stock options, management leaving to spend more time with their family will be the thing to do in 2009 I guess.

Cos if it is, why get rid of several hundred drones at the bottom of the payscale when one or two Senior Management types would achieve the same wage saving but still leave enough people doing the REAL work to actually supply the service you contract for?

Factor in the bonuses and other "enhancements" enjoyed by the 'top' people and you'd soon see HUGE cost savings...

On a lighter note, now EDS, CSC etc have stabbed all their staff in the back as soon as times get a little rough, what will they do when business picks up again and all their old "cast-offs" tell them to eat sh*t and die rather than go back to slaving for them?

Who knows, maybe someone in England's green and pleasant boardrooms will realise Outsourcing is not the wonderful solution they were promised and take IT back in-house... (yeah, and an infinite number of gorillas just knocked on my front door with some books they typed and decided to call "Encylopedia Gorilllica"...)

are all EDS'r's mad? leave the dam sinking boat... before its too late!!!!!

Matt, you need remedial maths lessons as well: 968 out of 16500 represents 5.87%