Wal-Mart to cut 2,300 job at Sam's Club

Wal-Mart Stores (WMT) is reportedly planning to lay off 2,300 employees at Sam's Club, marking the wholesale club's biggest layoffs since 2010.

The layoffs represent the latest cutbacks by U.S. retailers following a disappointing holiday shopping season.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the layoffs are aimed at reducing the number of middle managers at the company.

The 2,300 in reported cuts would represent roughly 2% of Sam's Club's employees.

Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-mart did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Wal-Mart is scheduled to report quarterly results on February 15. Shares of Wal-Mart fell 0.19% to $74.28 in after-hours action on Friday evening after dropping 0.72% during regular trading.

Earlier this week, Target (TGT) revealed plans to lay off 475 employees worldwide and keep 700 open positions unfilled.

Also, Macy's (M) recently announced it will slash 2,500 jobs and close five weaker-performing stores as part of efforts to save as much as $100 million a year.

Chicago : Accretive Health to cut 170 jobs

Accretive Health Inc. plans to cut as many as 170 jobs this year, most of them in Chicago.

The company will keep its headquarters here but move some functions to Dallas and Detroit.

The moves, which the company announced this morning, come less than 10 months into the tenure of Stephen Schuckenbrock, the former Dell Inc. executive drafted by Accretive in a management shakeup that moved founder Mary Tolan to the chairman spot. Ms. Tolan stepped down from the position and left the company in November to "pursue other business interests."

The company will cut 140 to 170 positions, "mostly" in Chicago and all in North America, with 25 layoffs immediately, a spokesman said.

The company has about 1,500 employees in North America, he said.

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It's also about a year after the company said it would have to restate financial results for quarters stretching back to 2009. Accretive did not file any financial results in 2013. The revenue cycle management firm intends to file restated results by March 19.

The restatement came just as the company was struggling to refashion its image after a widely publicized investigation by the Minnesota attorney general's office in to losses of data and alleged harsh collection tactics from patients health systems in the Minneapolis area.

Executives are holding a town hall meeting with employees this morning to inform them of the eliminations.

Target cuts 475 jobs worldwide

Target is cutting 475 jobs worldwide, the company told CNBC in an email on Wednesday.

The Minneapolis retailer also said 700 positions will not be filled. Target did not say what departments would be affected by the layoffs or how much money it would save the company.

The retailer has a total global headcount of 361,000 and employs about 14,000 at its headquarters and related offices in Minnesota.

The news comes just weeks after the Minneapolis, Minnesota-based company forecast weak results for the holiday season, during which it fell victim to a cyber attack that led to the theft of some 40 million payment card numbers and the personal data of 70 million customers.

(Read more: Target CEO defends 4-day wait to disclose massive data hack)

In early January, the retailer cut its fourth-quarter profit forecast, in part due to weaker-than-expected sales since reports of the cyber-attack emerged in mid-December.

"We believe these decisions, while difficult, are the right actions as we continue to focus on transforming our business," Target spokeswoman Molly Snyder said.

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Texas Instruments to cut 1,100 jobs worldwide

(Reuters) - Texas Instruments Inc plans to cut 1,100 jobs in the United States, Japan and India, or about 3 percent of its global workforce, in a corporate restructuring to save $130 million by the end of 2014.

The U.S. chipmaker, which in 2012 announced it would lay off 1,700 people as it wound down its mobile processor business, said on Tuesday it wanted to reduce expenses in its embedded-processing division and in Japan.

"Technology markets mature from time to time and you have to rebalance where you spend your money," Chief Financial Officer Kevin March said in an interview. "In the case of Japan, the size of the market there has been declining for a number of years."

While TI is better known to many consumers for its calculators, the Dallas-based company is regarded as a barometer of the chip industry because it makes components for a variety of markets, including industrial, automotive, consumer electronics and communications.

Demand for TI chips has gradually improved in recent months although many on Wall Street have been watching for a larger pickup, including an elusive buildup in inventories by manufacturing customers.

March said most of TI's customers have kept their inventories "extremely lean," largely because TI in recent years has increased its own store of available components so that it can fill new orders quickly.

Job cuts to TI's embedded business are centered mostly on products that have seen slow growth, he said. The job cuts in Japan will include sales and customer support.

TI took a $49 million charge in the fourth quarter, to be followed by about $30 million in the first.

"This to me shows they believe there are some more efficient ways to run the business than they were running it," RBC analyst Doug Freedman said of the chipmaker's job cuts.

TI is the second major chipmaker in the past week to announce layoffs.

Intel Corp said on Friday it plans to reduce its global workforce of 107,000 by about 5 percent this year as the chipmaker, struggling with falling personal-computer sales, shifts focus to faster-growing areas.

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TI, which has gradually withdrawn from an intensely competitive mobile phone arena to focus on supplying chips for more lucrative markets like cars and communications, posted fourth-quarter revenue on Tuesday that was up 2 percent from the year-ago period, above expectations.

TI reported fourth-quarter net income of $511 million, or 46 cents a share. The $49 million charge reduced earnings by 3 cents a share due to the restructuring.

In the year-ago quarter, TI had net income of $264 million, or 23 cents.

Revenue rose to $3.03 billion in the fourth quarter - a little higher than expected - from $2.98 billion in the year-ago quarter. TI estimated first-quarter revenue of $2.83 billion to $3.07 billion.

Analysts on average had predicted $2.987 billion in revenue for the fourth quarter and $2.95 billion for the first quarter, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

It said it expects EPS in the first quarter of 36 cents to 44 cents.

On a conference call with analysts, TI said it will stop providing mid-quarter updates to its outlook because its business increasingly reflects broad trends instead of changes caused by major customers.

Shares of TI fell 1.59 percent in extended trade after closing up 0.92 percent at $43.85 on Nasdaq.

Intel Plans to Cut 5,000 Jobs in 2014

Intel expects to shed about 5 percent of its work force, or 5,000 jobs, in 2014, as it tries to change the company with the times, according to a company official.

The official, who spoke only anonymously, said the cuts would probably be made through a mixture of attrition and layoffs.

Intel, the world’s largest maker of semiconductors, rode to greatness by supplying crucial elements of personal computers, but it failed to anticipate the ways that smartphones and tablets would start to replace PCs.

Brian M. Krzanich, who became chief executive of Intel in mid-2013, has said that Intel has realized its mistake. He has been in a hurry to show how Intel’s newest chips could be part of wearable computers, biometric devices and even connected appliances.

Intel is also trying to make low-power chips that can compete in tablets and smartphones and to push new versions of chips for PCs. Those chips for PCs remain critical for Intel. In earnings announced on Thursday, the company said its PC division had $33 billion in revenue in 2013. While that number was down 4 percent from 2012, it was still nearly two-thirds of Intel’s annual revenue of $52.7 billion.

Intel also projected that its revenue for all of 2014 would be flat and that gross profit margins could shrink. Research and development spending was also expected to stabilize despite the pressure on profits, as Intel seeks new places to put its chips.

In a call with financial analysts on Thursday, Stacy J. Smith, Intel’s chief financial officer, said Intel would invest in chips for “things like the data center, tablets, low-power systems on a chip.” Those systems enable chips to perform several functions in a small space. He added, “There’s going be a significant shift in investment over the course of the year.”

The employment cuts, which the Intel official said were part of a larger program to shift resources to growing business lines, appeared to sit well with Wall Street.

Intel shares, which fell about 5 percent in early trading on Friday, recovered toward the end of the day as word of the job cuts began to circulate. The stock closed at $25.85 a share, down 2.6 percent, or 69 cents.