BT profits hit by cost of paying for redundancies

BT’s half-yearly profits have almost halved, partly due to the cost of making people redundant.

The telecoms giant made a pre-tax profit of £547m in the six months to 30 September, a 45% decline on the £991m profit it reported a year earlier.

Earlier this year the firm said it was cutting 15,000 jobs.

A change in how BT accounts for its pension deficit also contributed to the fall in profits.

Most of the jobs are going at BT’s Global Services IT division.