Advertisement - Click to support our sponsors.

WorldPoint cuts
39 more jobs

It had cut 15 others
here last week

---

By Russ Lynch
Star-Bulletin

Honolulu-headquartered Internet consultancy WorldPoint Interactive Inc. has trimmed about 40 jobs, reducing its staff from about 70 to 31, in one of the moves it said will save it $6 million in operating expenses this year.

Most of the cuts were outside Hawaii, where cuts were already made, and they included closing offices in Zurich, Dallas and Hong Kong, the company said in a statement issued yesterday. A week ago, WorldPoint cut 15 positions in Honolulu, leaving it with about 30 at its headquarters.

The firm, which helps clients go global, mainly through using thousands of translators worldwide to help businesses offer their Web sites in local languages everywhere, said it will keep its core operations in Hawaii. Most of its cuts were in research and development and the company now will concentrate on the services it already offers and on making money, said Massimo Fuchs, president and chief executive officer.

"The economic environment for Internet-based companies has has become much tougher than we anticipated," Fuchs said.

Founded in 1995, WorldPoint had planned to go public last year. A company spokesman in California, Ron Pettay, said today that the plunge in shares of Internet companies made for bad timing and the plan for an initial public offering was put on hold. At its peak, thefirm had about 100 employees. WorldPoint owes the State of Hawaii about $800,000, including interest, from a loan it received in 1996 to help it get started, and has said it is negotiating a new payment plan.