IN what would be the biggest corporate lay-off ever, IBM is set to axe more than 111,000 of its staff this week.

Dubbed Project Chrome internally at IBM, the process will see 26 per cent of the IT company's workforce laid off in one fell swoop, meaning that 111,800 people could lose their jobs before the end of January based on IBM's global workforce of 430,000.

News of the job cuts come from veteran Silicon Valley reporter Robert X. Cringely, who recently published a book entitled The Decline and Fall of IBM.

The record for the largest single corporate lay-off is also held by IBM, having fired more than 60,000 of its workforce in 1993, but this would be dwarfed if Cringely's predictions come true.

Last year Microsoft hit the headlines when it had its largest ever jobs cull when it laid off more than 18,000 staff in one go.

IBM's problems were underscored last week when it announced another set of weak quarterly revenue figures, its eleventh straight quarter of declining revenue.

Following those results, chief executive Ginni Rometty said the company was in transition but made no mention of the huge job cuts: "We are making significant progress in our transformation, continuing to shift IBM's business to higher value, and investing and positioning ourselves for the longer term."