“We recorded a net loss of around €5.3 billion, primarily due to the recognition of an impairment loss” of €7.4 billion on T-Mobile USA, Deutsche Telekom said in its 2012 annual report. In 2011, it booked a year-end profit of €557 million euros.

The loss in the US – announced last October – has prompted the company to push for a merger of T-Mobile US with the mobile phone operator MetroPCS.

The multi-national company, which employs 230,000 workers worldwide, said massive losses in 2012 would not effect its projected business outlook for this year, which predicts an end-of-year operating profit of €17.4 billion.

In January, the Handelsblatt newspaper reported the Bonn-based telecommunications giant was planning to cut jobs 1,200 jobs in Germany by June in a bid to cut overhead costs by ten percent and save €100 million a year.

Employees would be cut from its marketing, management and administration departments, inside sources told the paper at the time, in a move the company described as “reorganization” rather than a downscaling operation.

AFP/The Local/jlb