Sea’s latest staff reduction is the layoff of 100 employees at its subsidiary Shopee. Bloomberg said that the people who have been cut from their jobs have just received the notice on November 14. This is part of Sea’s layoff plan from June 2022.
Singapore’s technology giant has “evaporated” 90% of its capitalization from its peak as doubts about its profit prospects amid rising interest rates and increasingly fierce competition. The company has implemented plans to reduce staff, close e-commerce branches in Europe and Latin America and said it will cut operating costs.
Sea is expected to announce its third-quarter business results on November 15. Experts estimate Sea will suffer a heavy loss and weakest revenue growth since 2017.
Bloomberg’s source said that this e-commerce giant also cut recruitment, reduced employee relationship management, training … in Singapore and China.
The list of employees fired includes staff who support recruitment and training activities at Shopee and digital financial services company SeaMoney (the company that operates ShopeePay). Managers at Sea were also instructed to be more cautious in recruitment as the company prepares to enter a difficult economic period.
Sea once shared: “We will continue to carefully review business projects and prioritize self-achievable goals to optimize operational efficiency. We are also working to support affected colleagues in this transition” Sea said in a statement.
By the end of 2021, Sea used to have more than 67,000 employees.
In September 2022, billionaire Forrest Li, co-founder of Sea, announced that the company’s top executives would not receive salaries and tightened the company’s expense policies to get through this difficult period.
Earlier, Bloomberg reported, the fortune of Mr. Forrest Li, CEO of Sea, is now only 3 billion USD. Last year, he had a fortune of up to 22 billion USD.
Gang Ye and David Chen, two other co-founders, also lost $13.5 billion. In total, the three Sea founders lost more than $32.5 billion.
References: Bloomberg
Source: Vietnam Insider