McDonald's to close restaurants and cut jobs

Burger giant McDonald's said today it would close about 175 underperforming restaurants and cut up to 600 jobs worldwide. It also said earnings for 2002 would fall short of expectations.

The closures will affect 10 countries.

McDonald's will also pull out of three small countries in the Middle East and Latin America and restructure its operations in four further countries in these regions. In total it has about 200 restaurants in these seven countries.

It said: "McDonald's expects these actions will reduce its fourth quarter 2002 pre-tax income by about $350-$425m."

The company said system-wide sales in October were $3.5b (£2.2b), an increase of 3%.

But like-for-like sales were down in many regions, including the USA, down by 0.6%, and Europe, down by 2.2%.

McDonald's has more than 30,000 restaurants around the world.