VT sheds 350 jobs to ready itself for recovery

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VT said today it is axing whole rafts of middle management and senior staff right up to members of the group's executive board in a bid to save £18 million a year. Chief executive Paul Lester said: "Whoever is in government in the coming years will need to take out costs. We believe that will mean national and local government outsourcing more and more to save money which obviously creates opportunities for us.

"What we are doing is reorganising ourselves to ready the business for those opportunities."

VT which is exiting its warship-building heritage with the effective £300 million sale of its assets to BAE Systems, today reported a 40% surge in underlying profits of £87million in the year to the end of March.

Revenues in the year leapt 30% to £1 billion, the order book is up 12% at £4.5 billion and the dividend has been increased 10% to 14.4p.