Montgomery Paper Group to Cut Dutch Jobs

David Montgomery's European newspaper group, Mecom, is to cut up to 465 jobs - a 10th of the workforce - at its Dutch regional business Wegener.

The move comes as Montgomery drives through controversial job cuts elsewhere in his empire. The former Mirror Group chief executive has already riled journalists at Mecom's papers in Germany, who have complained of cost cutting and an exodus of talent. Mecom owns more than 300 European titles and employs 11,000.

In the Netherlands, Mecom is to cut 395 to 465 full-time equivalent positions from a staff of 4,000 as a result of crunching the three publishing operations of Wegener into a single unit. Support functions are to be handled by a single back-office; journalists are expected to be affected by the cull, which is designed to reduce costs by between €32m and €37m (£25m-£29m).

This month seven Wegener editors wrote to Montgomery, the executive chairman, expressing their "grave concern" about the future of their titles under Mecom, which acquired 87% of Wegener's shares in October last year.

"Confidence in the company names of Mecom and Wegener is fading away on the shop floors ... Although people work very hard, stimulus from the company management is often negative and seldom encouraging," they said. This week it emerged that Mecom was cutting 30 journalists' jobs from the German newspaper Berliner Zeitung, with up to 200 jobs reported to be at risk at its parent company.