Is IBM gearing up to cut 10,000 staff?

IBM said on Thursday Martin Schroeter will step down as chief financial officer and will be replaced by James Kavanaugh, effective Jan. 11.

Schroeter will take on a new role as senior vice president, global markets. Kavanaugh is currently senior vice president, finance and operations.

Earlier in the day, technology website The Register reported, citing unnamed company insiders, that IBM plans to reassign up to 30 percent of staff in its 103,000 computer service delivery business this year with job cuts through attrition of around 10,000.

"We do not comment on speculation," an IBM spokesman said, asked about the report.

The Register published a slide it said was from an IBM internal document, which showed 10,100 jobs classified as "attrition w/o backfill".

"Many consultants recommend things to IBM, many of which remain merely recommendations," IBM said.

IBM, one of the world's original PC producers but now a broad-based producer, integrator and software maker, beat expectations for revenue in its last quarterly results in October after 22 straight quarters of declines.

The company's shares were marginally up in after-market trading.

Reporting by Eric Auchard in Frankfurt and Aishwarya Venugopal in Bengaluru; Writing by Patrick Graham; Editing by Bernard Orr and Shounak Dasgupta.