Jonesco to axe 25 in further Express rejig

Express Newspapers’ new sales director Andy Jonesco is to make 25 people redundant in his first cost-cutting restructure of the 70-strong advertising sales and research departments.

Jonesco informed the sales team at a packed office meeting on Tuesday lunchtime (yesterday) that the redundancies were required as a consequence of a department restructure.

The specialist sales teams – covering areas such as mail order and travel – have been merged with the main agency sales teams.

It is understood the Express is trying to make the redundancies voluntary.

The staff were told they had until the end of today (Wednesday) to decide if they wanted to negotiate redundancy terms as a group or individually. The Express negotiated with the 85 journalists it made redundant as a group when the newspaper moved to a seven-day editorial operation in September last year.

It is believed Jonesco had been told by Express’ executive director Stephen Grabiner and United News & Media chief executive Clive Hollick that cost-cutting was needed in the ad sales department before he joined in October (MW October 25 1996).

Before the 110 editorial and advertising redundancies in the past six months, the newspaper group had lost 220 staff in a restructure implemented by its previous management in July 1995 (MW July 21 1995).