TeliaSonera to launch three-year cost-cutting plan

Nordic telecoms giant TeliaSonera http://www.telia.com has announced that it plans to cut costs by between 5 billion and 6 billion Swedish Kroner (550 million and 660 million euros) over the next three years, due to flat fourth-quarter sales and profits. As the Financial Times (FT) http://www.ft.com reports, the Swedish-Finnish group has said the moves will hit its 2005 operating profits but eventually lead to higher market growth. According to the telecoms operator, the brunt of the measures will hit Sweden, with only about 1 billion Swedish Kroner (110 million euros) worth of cuts in Finland. Costs will be directed at all its operations and include redeploying staff and making redundancies, the company said.