Stepstone, the online recruitment group, is expected to write off around 4m euros (£2.5m) as part of a restructuring of its business.

Stepstone, which has expanded into 18 countries, yesterday said the charge would cover the closure of a number of regional offices on the continent and payments to redundant staff. One hundred employees in southern Europe have already left the business.

The group is reducing the number of telesales staff it employs and taking on more IT workers, expecting the restructuring to reduce its overall costs.

Giles Clarke, Stepstone's chief executive, denied that the reorganisation followed a downturn in the company's markets across Europe. But he did admit the group was facing cautious attitudes from European companies.

Mr Clarke said he expected to see significant growth this year, despite the economic climate and a slow start to trading in 2001.

According to the company it is restructuring because the nature of its business is changing. "We are doing a lot more web-enabled business and we are moving into software and IT which requires different sorts of people, so in some of the countries we are in we don't need the people that we have," Mr Clarke said.

The group was looking to employ 50 or 60 IT staff and did not rule out the possibility of more job losses. A company spokesperson said there had been a slowdown at the beginning of the year but it was more "sentiment" than anything else.

The company's sales for 2000 were just over €60m, nearly four times more than 1999, and revenues were up by 327% to €52.2m. Operating losses were €138.7m, compared with a loss of €24.4m in 1999, due to the group's rapid expansion throughout Europe. The company said that the online recruitment market in Europe was estimated to have reached 2% of the print classified market last year.