Philips said it expected the reorganisation to cost around €300m (£264m) in the coming quarters.Jakobs joined Philips as CEO in October 2022 and was immediately faced with the task of dealing with the response to the ventilator recall and resolving supply chain issues that were affecting Philips’ overall sales.

The company is currently in talks with the US Department of Justice on a settlement following the ventilator recall. Philips is only the latest of a series of technology companies that have recently announced large-scale restructuring plans. Last week, Microsoft announced it would cut 10,000 jobs while Google parent company Alphabet announced it would lay off about 12,000 people worldwide. The announcements followed the confirmation of Amazon’s plans to lay off 18,000 employees, as well as the announcement that Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, would be cutting its global workforce by 13 per cent. IBM, SAP, Twitter, Lyft, Snap, Stripe, Salesforce and Spotify are some of the other technology firms to have laid off workers in recent months