By Barry Ellsworth
MONTREAL
A Canadian firm with ties to Turkey announced Thursday it is cutting its global workforce by 4,000 jobs or about 9 percent beginning in 2015.
Montreal-based SNC-Lavalin, one of the world’s leading engineering and construction groups, has offices in more than 50 countries with a global workforce of about 45,000.
About three-quarters of the cuts will be outside of Canada, but there is little information about where the reductions will take place.
News of the cuts, which will take effect over an 18-month period, comes as SNC-Lavalin reported a third quarter profit but officials cited a weakness in its mining business and “other challenges,” the Financial Post reported.
The company has also been affected over the past few years by charges of alleged corruption by some of its former senior executives, various media reported.
SNC-Lavalin was part of a Canadian trade mission to Turkey in June 2013.
“During this mission, SNC-Lavalin is seeking primarily to promote its ability to undertake major projects in the areas of transportation, hydroelectric and thermal power plants, as well as projects with an environmental focus,” Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Canada reported about the mission.
The Canadian government also said at that time that, “In Turkey, SNC-Lavalin currently provides engineering/construction services for such industries as coal, natural gas and oil, food processing, iron and steel, hydroelectric power and transportation.”
In the 1990s, the firm partnered with another Canadian company, Bombardier Inc., and signed with Turkey to develop a transportation project in Ankara based on the automated SkyTrain system in that was successful in Vancouver.
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