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Informa: the events and publishing company is suffering industry slowdown

Informa Group has announced 150 jobs losses in the UK as a result of "significant slowdown" in the telecommunications industry.

The business-to-business publishing and events company, which includes Mobile Communications International among its titles, said that cutbacks and closures within the industry are severely affecting attendance at its events.

All job cuts will be "back-office" staff within the telecoms
division, according to a spokesperson for the group, and the redundancies make up five per cent of the workforce.

In May, Informa said that delegate attendance levels had fallen to as low as 50% for some of its smaller telecoms events, but expected the situation to improve. In its major Bluetooth Congress in June, however, attendance remained low and profits for the event were flat.

Informa, headed by chairman Peter Rigby, said subscriptions and advertising levels across its specialist titles continue to perform well and trading across the rest of the company is in line with expectations but uncertainty within the telecoms sector looks set to remain.

"In a period of such rapid change it is not easy to predict conditions for the sector in 2002," the trading statement read.

"Informa's range of market-leading information products in the mobile telecoms business ... positions us well to capitalise on any improvement in sentiment as the international drive to third generation technology continues."

The company has made a series of acquisitions in recent years including bio-tech and financial publications in the US.