Telecoms firm Alcatel-Lucent to cut 10,000 jobs

PARIS – Telecommunications equipment maker Alcatel-Lucent SA said Tuesday that it plans to cut 10,000 jobs worldwide over the next two years, the latest cost-cutting drive from the loss-making company.

The job cuts are part of a restructuring plan to make the French-American company more competitive. The plan is to reduce fixed costs by cutting $1.36 billion, or about 15 percent, by the end of 2015. Under the plan, the company will reallocate research investment to next-generation technology and cut investment in older technology.

The company has struggled since its inception in 2006, when France’s Alcatel and the U.S.’s Lucent merged.

Alcatel said the job cuts would be presented to its European works council on Tuesday. The cuts will come from all of the regions in which the company operates: 4,100 positions will be cut in its Europe, Middle East and Africa region, 3,800 in the Asia-Pacific zone and 2,100 in the Americas.

Tweeter stock symbol gets farther from Twitter

NEW YORK – Tweeter is not Twitter. And its stock symbol has changed to avoid any confusion.

The bankrupt electronics retailer’s stock resumed trading Tuesday under “THEGQ.” Its old symbol was “TWTRQ.”

That was apparently too similar to “TWTR,” the symbol proposed by Twitter on Thursday when the messaging service filed plans for its highly anticipated initial public offering.

Some confused investors sent Tweeter’s stock up as much as 1,400 percent on Friday. And trading volume skyrocketed to 14.4 million shares. Over the past year, the daily average was about 29,000, according to FactSet.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Wall Street’s industry regulator, halted trading of Tweeter’s stock Friday afternoon because of the misunderstanding. To avoid “further confusion,” Finra decided to change Tweeter’s symbol, the group said. The trades from last week will stand, however.

Finra said that if the trades are canceled, it will notify markets.